


Alloy

by skyereads



Series: Metallurgy [2]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, First Time Blow Jobs, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Keldabe Kiss, Mandalorian, Mandalorian Culture, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Sexy Times, Single Parents, Slow Burn, Smut, Some Plot, Touch-Starved, Unresolved Emotional Tension, din is such a mother hen, marriage proposals, playing fast and loose with Mandalorian culture, soft boi Din, star wars world builing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:46:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23500294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyereads/pseuds/skyereads
Summary: Combining two or more metallic elements to give greater strength or to prevent corrosion. Din, along with the Child meets up with other surviving Mandalorians on the planet Carlac, a peaceful idyllic spot. Co-habiting with the locals, the Mandalorians are making peace with their past, under the leadership of Sana Kryze - the woman that has stolen Din's heart. What will become of their evolving relationship?
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Din Djarin/Original Female Character, The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Metallurgy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1690960
Comments: 43
Kudos: 135





	1. Chapter 1

“Still have your reflexes, don’t you, bounty hunter?”

His weapon hangs limply in his hand. His thoughts are a jumble until it hits him clearly, like a diamond crystallizing in his head.

“No.” The sound barely passes his lips.

She’s slowly turning around.

“Don’t,” he says, but it’s too late.

It’s her eyes he sees first – hazel, large and curious – they command her whole face, flashing with so much emotion. There are tears welling there, and he sharply bites down on the ones stinging in his own eyes. The cold air has put spots of pink on her round cheeks, and there is a splash of freckles, like a streaking comet, across the bridge of her nose. Featherlight wisps of hair loosened in her braid frame her face.

“I swear I thought they warned you,” she says. He can see each word forming on her lips. Amazed at how _soft_ her voice is unmodulated, unmediated. “That things are a little different here.”

“But,” he tries to speak, fails, doesn’t know what to say.

The morning light coming through the cargo doors, strikes off the purple armor that decorates her body, the proud cuirass, the gauntlets at her arms. Her long white cape swishes around her.

Her expression alters between timidity and extreme disquiet. The wrinkling between her furrowed brows appear stark and deep. He wants to erase the worry and distress and is amazed that his hand is already reaching forward, unhindered, and brushes a thumb against those lines.

She does not flinch away. In fact, her whole face softens under his touch, and mesmerized he traces along her eyebrows, sweeping his fingers down the bridge of her nose, around the curve of a cheekbone. A puff of air hits his palm in a soft sigh. He swipes his thumb across her lips, dips under her chin, along her jaw and up to her earlobe. She shudders at the sensation.

“Sana.” He says her name. It stirs him like the wind. He huffs, in relief, in humor; he doesn't know. “How?”

How many nights on the Crest had he, in his lonesome state, thought about her? About her body? About the way she molded to him, arched into his touch, had unraveled before his very eyes? How often had he imagined her face? How had he been so terribly wrong? She was more beautiful than his dreams had ever been.

Overwhelmed, Sana’s having trouble holding direct eye contact with him. There’s an evolving smile at the corner of her lips that hesitates before it reaches her eyes. “Din, I can explain. I can explain everything,” she says too hastily. “I – I can.”

She cuts herself short. Something ripples across her face, on instinct, he steps closer, holds her face as a tear drops down her cheek. He sees flecks of green in the hazel color.

“ _Din._ ”

It nearly breaks him, hearing his own name, _seeing_ it on her lips. He wants to watch her speak his name for the rest of his life. His thumbs catch the few more tears falling, and he’s confused because she’s suddenly laughing, mouth wide, pearly teeth bared, and it’s too much, that he starts laughing too – small breathy chuckles, while loud full-bellied guffaws come from her.

He’s never felt so light and so _full_ at the same time.

They nearly fall over onto the floor, staggering and snickering.

“Din!” She’s gasping for air, clutching sharply at her side with a wince. “I hope – I hope you’re not disappointed.”

“No,” he says, horrified, because he can’t believe… can’t believe… He rips his gloves off his hands, drops them to the floor so he can take her face in his hands, and really touch her. He makes another path along her nose, cheeks, her whole face. She melts into his touch. Her smile is as brilliant as the sun reflecting on the snow.

“This is new,” she says, looking down at his unpainted beskar armor. “Exquisite. Your Armorer is a real craftswoman, I’ve never seen such…”

Her hands glide over its burnished texture, coming to rest on the mudhorn signet on his pauldron. “That’s new too?” An eyebrow quirks. “Anything else new I should know about? Did you get a haircut under there?”

“I have a Foundling,” he says hesitantly.

“Yes, I heard about that. It’s so good to see you.”

But it’s brief – too brief – because a shadow falls over, darkening her expression, turning her serious. “There’s much to discuss.”

* * *

There’s barely any time to catch up. She has a speeder parked behind a copse of trees and they trudge through a fresh patch of snow to retrieve it. Questions burn on his tongue, stuff up his throat, but he can’t bring himself to ask them. Each time he tries, he’s too stunned to speak.

Sana’s explaining how she had been visiting a neighboring village with a team of scouts and on their return this morning she spotted his ship in the trees.

“We are trying to set up a trade negotiation with the other villages. There are more of us arriving each month and our supplies are only so much. It’s wonderful seeing how many of us have survived, and as much as we’re self-sufficient, we still need a lot. For there are plenty of Foundlings.”

The cold has only heightened the pink on her cheeks like an infinite blush, reddening her lips too. She keeps looking at him over her shoulder, soft and smiling, as they walk side by side in the snow.

“It takes some getting used to, I know.” Sana spoke up, taking in his dumbfounded gaze on her. “My clan is still getting used to it themselves.”

“Have they all…?”

“Just me. For now. I can’t talk any of them into it. It has to be their own choice. There are many here who never wore their armor so much. Coverts that practice differently. The Mandalorian Creed is more than the sum of its parts. It’s not the helmet alone.”

He nods in baffled sympathy.

A recognizable purple painted beskar helmet sits atop the speeder seat, and she dons it, sitting in the driver’s seat. He scoots in behind her and takes a moment to figure out where to put his hands, but she’s already starting the bike and it sets off, so he has to grab around her midriff.

* * *

The overnight blizzard did little to impede daily life in the Ming Po village and it’s a bustling area when he and Sana return on the speeder. She removes her helmet again, crooking it under her elbow, and directs him to follow her.

Din’s efforts to get more answers out of Sana are delayed. Many in the village stop to nod or greet Sana as she walks among them, and he notices that she affords to return a greeting to each one either by name or clan affiliation. While her main path is slightly diverted and takes many cutbacks to wave or tease some Foundlings, she leads him towards one of the larger blackened fire-burned buildings still standing, though precariously so.

“Do you know who destroyed these?” Sana asks him as the walk through the damage. The patchworked roof leaves eerie somber shadows on the virgin snow crunching beneath their feet. Suddenly, the busy hubbub of the main path and the village center seems so far behind them. She continues speaking when he shook his head, no.

“It was Mandalorians.”

The hulking skeleton creaks slightly above with the draft, the whole building trembling, making strange whistles and whispers around them.

“A generation ago,” Sana continues, “Mandalorians slaughtered those who lived in this town, even killing their chieftain’s granddaughter. Their homes were burned, their food and resources destroyed. The survivors scattered. Sound familiar? And yet, it was Death Watch who was responsible. Death Watch who destroyed many things in its path in the name of building a new Mandalore.

“It is my intention that in settling here, we also confront our past – all of it, even the parts we would rather ignore.” She’s solemn as she speaks, silently grieving. “The Ming Po are a very simple people by their own admission. Trust too easily. Some would call that a weakness, and it was their downfall with Death Watch. But I do not intend to betray them. Their Council of Elders very nearly rejected my plea for sanctuary, you know.”

They step further into the building. Ahead he can see a warming lamp sitting in a small pit under one awning still remaining, and the familiar outlines of the dark blue armor of Paz Vizla and the gold-helmeted Armorer around it, apparently waiting for them.

“Then how did you convince them?”

Sana’s eyes sparkle at Din. “I removed my helmet.” She pauses, tilts her head in consideration. “I suppose they took it as a gesture of my sincerity.”

As they approach the other Mandalorians, they all nod at each other in greeting. Paz’ shoulder pauldron bumps roughly against Din’s, and the slighter man shoots him a glare.

“Interrupting your alone time, are we, Consort?” Paz’ makes the crude joke under his breath, no doubt with a ludicrous smirk. Din’s glare under his helmet hardens.

“Paz,” Sana greets him, her tone exceptionally stiff. The other man straightens and he backs away from Din. “My day is always improved when I run into a Vizla.”

It’s dripping with sarcasm, to which Paz can only match. “Kryze,” he drawls.

But Sana is smiling at him, teasingly so. She crouches before the warming lamp, sets her helmet upon the ground to sit on it, the blaster weapon on her side clinking against the metal on her legs. The long white cape fans out around her, blending neatly in with the snow. Perching forward, she leans enough to warm her hands by the lantern.

“Well I can say my negotiations with our neighbors are tentatively settled, they have medical supplies, but limited quantities,” she starts. “We shall sort out the details going forward.”

The Armorer nods, moving closer to the lamp. “Good. The needs of the few are but many. But now that Djarin has joined us, he brings news from Nevarro.”

“What of it?” Sana tilts her head expectantly at Din.

Din stands stiffly, not one for subtlety. “Moff Gideon is dead.”

Paz swears a series of delighted curses in Mando’a. Sana is the only incredulous one.

“Really? You met him?” she asks

“I wouldn’t say that. He was hunting the Child.”

The group all exchange glances, a mix of timid skepticism and surprised hope. There’s a sudden spark to the air, a murmur that settles over them. The awning above them seems to sway as if also shaken by the news.

“And he’s dead? Truly dead?” Sana’s face has gone pale, lips flattened in consternation.

“Good riddance,” Paz mumbles and kicks up a spray of snow.

The Armorer does not celebrate. “We must be wary with this news.”

Din shakes his head, adamant. “I blew his TIE out of the sky.”

“All the same. He has already faked his death once before,” says the older woman. “We cannot confirm anything.”

Din feels his own hopes begin to falter, and his face falls behind his visor, eyes squinting at the yellow lights of the lamp before them.

“But you saw him?” Sana’s questions leap onto one another, nearly interrupting herself with sudden excitement and agitation. “It might have been on his person. Was he carrying the weapon? The Artifact? Did you see what he was carrying?”

Din’s own mind stutters, slowly trying to remember. “He had an E-Web,” he said. It had all happened so fast. The explosions outside the cantina. The Client shot dead before them. The fire that nearly consumed them.

“I didn’t see…”

The Child saving them with a flick of his tiny wrist. IG-11. Cara’s pleading looks. Kuiil. His heart hammers in his chest and he had to focus on his breathing, as black spots cloud his vision.

“It wouldn’t look like a traditional weapon,” Sana’s speaking, but it sounds like it’s coming from far away, like down a tunnel. “It would look like a sword. Like a saber.”

Din can’t answer. His head is spinning too fast.

“How did this Imp get it anyway?” Paz wonders from Din’s other side.

The Imps. There had been so many Imps. Crawling in the sewers. The pile of beskar helmets left in the tunnels. Kuiil’s fallen body.

“It was either stolen or won in combat.”

Paz’s sneer is ferocious, bitter. “Leave it to a Kryze to lose our precious artifact.”

Sana’s retorting huff sends her to her feet, fists balled at her side, snarling at the larger man. “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for House Vizla!”

“We could have made our enemies bow before us,” Paz barks back, equally proud. “If _your_ people weren’t so focused on pacifism!”

“ – putting the prize of Mandalore in the hands of an outsider –”

“ – weak and an embarrassment to our ancestral way of living –”

Their arguments are drowned out by the loud crashing of waves in Din’s head. The wound on the back of his head throbs with a familiar ache and he’s suddenly falling. He snaps to as his knees hit the compact snow and he shudders and catches himself, breathing heavy.

“Din.” It’s Sana. She’s crouching before him, concern coloring her features.

“I’m okay,” he says, fighting for air. “I’m okay.”

And so, he’s able to stand, only squeezing Sana’s hand in reassurance. Paz has gone silent, and even his usually menacingly rigid shoulders have softened. He’s taken a few tentative steps closer to Din.

“How did the Imperials get the artifact?” Din asks weakly, wanting the attention off of him.

“Only the dead know,” says the Armorer cryptically.

They lapse into a wary silence, burdened with the weight of history and all its untold grief. Sana and Paz eye each other, but the burn of their animosity cooling.

Din is the first to speak up after a while. “What are you going to do with it?”

“It’s an artifact of Clan Vizla,” Sana answers, seated on her helmet once again, hands bridged under her chin. “It belongs to him.”

She jerks her chin at Paz, who just crosses his arms.

“It _belongs_ in the vaults on Mandalore,” the heavy infantryman shoots back. “What are we doing on Carlac anyway, Kryze? We should be on Mandalore. We should be home.”

But Sana is shaking her head, strands of her hair flying about her face. “It’s uninhabitable. You haven’t been there, but I have. The soil is tainted; the air, poisoned. It would be a century before it’d be safe to live their again. The wars –”

She shook her head even more, falling silent.

“One day we will return there,” the Armorer spoke up, calm and collected. “If not in our lifetime, then the Foundlings, our children.”

Sana’s head snaps sharply in the direction of the Armorer; Din’s own eyes try to read Sana’s expression.

“They are the future,” the Armorer concludes. “This is the Way.”

“This is the Way,” both Paz and Din repeat.

Sana’s vacant gaze is centered on the warm glow of the lantern. She’s the last to speak. “This is the Way,” she mumbles, but her thoughts are light years away.

* * *

Sana escorts him back to the main part of the village, making small talk with him. It’s clearly a distraction, to set him at ease, or perhaps for the benefit of the others nearby. “You are comfortable in your lodgings?”

“Yes,” he answers. “Thank you.”

Her hand comes to rest gently on his elbow, and though they are far enough away from Paz and the Armorer by now, she leans in closer and drops her voice. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes are searching behind his visor, dips to see if his shoulders betray his answer, but she blinks and nods, satisfied. Din watches Sana’s lips part and take a deep breath; she seems on the verge of asking him something else, but then thinks better of it. Instead, she removes her hand from his elbow and turns away.

“Good. I will see you soon then.”

Unconcerned with what the others might see in his movement, Din abruptly grabs her upper arm before she can get too far away from him. Two things happen that shock him.

The first is the rough way in which he says her name – past pleading for answers, he’s demanding. The unspoken lapses between them are too loaded, and make him tense, impatient.

The second thing, and more importantly than his own internal reactions, which have already betrayed him today, is the contortion of Sana’s face as soon as he grabs her.

Din is not a man that is afraid to use force, proportionate and appropriately. He’s not the type to _not_ be aware of his own strength either; he’s very much aware. In fact, is often reminded of it when he finds that he lands far too often on his back than he’d care to count. He’s also a man aware that his own bluntness can get him into trouble, but there are always worse things than a poor bedside manner. Later, replaying this scene over in his head, he thinks he should have seen this coming, for the look on her face in that moment is a terrifying prospect for Din, one he hopes never to confront again.

As Din yanks her arm, stopping her from a retreat, she yelps a soft cry and clutches her side, underneath the arm he’s pulling. A savage mix of pain and – here, Din is horrified to see – fear flash across her naked face.

Din drops her arm immediately, apologizing. Sana, all the while, turning a mix of colors, from pale to beet-red to a kind of green, quickly stumbles over apologies and soothing words of her own. But the way she’s holding her side awkwardly is unconvincing.

“It’s nothing. You startled me, is all.”

Of course, she’s not used to hiding her emotions, for Din can see blatant attempts on her part to do just that.

“What did you want?” She asks him, changing the subject.

He can’t help the way his shoulders suddenly droop. “The ritual,” he says, but regrets it. How lame it seems now – his wanting to know how it all turned out. It seems like after all that, after the day she’s having already, this is the last thing she probably wants to bring up. But he cannot fight his own overpowering curiosity, no matter how invasive.

“Tonight,” she says firmly, but there is a softness to her gaze. “I will answer all your questions. Will you come to my tent?”

A sudden ruckus from the Ming Po village distracts them both, but it’s merely a group of children enjoying some game. She pauses to let the noise die down before speaking again.

“Please. My day is not quite finished. But I promise I will answer them.”

The noises of the children grow louder, and the two adults turn to find a group of younglings laughing and teasing each other, heading their way. Held in the arms of one Ming Po boy with a missing front tooth, is Din’s Foundling looking very sneakily smug.

“Is he causing trouble?” Din smiles and takes the Child, who’s making grabby hands at him.

Sana’s fond smile at the children turns to wonder at the sight of Din’s Foundling, now pressing his round face right into the warm cowl of Din’s cape on his front. The Child makes a soft purring sound, and it settles warmly over the former bounty hunter. The darkness that had earlier threatened to overtake him fleeing to the furthest reaches of his mind.

“Sana," he says, wrapping some of his cape around the small thing nestled against his neck. "Have you met my Foundling?”

She’s hiding an ear-splitting grin behind her hand, lowering her mirthful eyes. “When they told me you had a Foundling, I just assumed it was a _human_ child…”

Din chuckles.

“What is it?” She strokes one large ear, which makes the Child turn blinking up at her, a quizzical expression on his small face.

“I’m not sure,” says Din. “But he’s very special.”

Sana’s fond look is for Din and the Child alone. “I can see that.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sana and Din finally catch up.

The snow starts falling again that evening.

It’s a soothing end to a day that saw a conflicting range of emotions swirl within Din.

This – just him and Child, tucking into a meal together, alone in a peaceful environment – he finds he can get used to this. The setting Carlac offers is a worthwhile change to the unsympathetic durasteel and hardware of the interior of the Razor Crest. With the warming lamp, enough rugs and furs for comfort along the floor, a sleeping pallet with space to sprawl, these are amenities that seem luxurious compared to what Din’s meager living standards has supplied.

While it’s not blizzarding like the previous night, it brings a steadily declining chill that makes Din chase after the Child, whose toddling, rebelliously away so he can sit by the entrance to the domed yurt. The Child is enjoying the snow, wrapped tightly in a wool blanket at Din’s bidding. Holding out his tiny claws to catch the occasional stray flake and giggling, jubilant in his own game, whenever one lands directly in his mouth or tickles along his ears.

Din steals the occasional protective glance from the low stool he’s pulled over to the heating lamp in the center of the room as he cleans his blaster. He hasn’t felt this way since Sorgan – the only other place where he thought the Child would be provided sanctuary. It’s been a tedious year, Din thinks, reflecting on it, and he nearly feels that darkness overshadow him all over again.

He shakes his head roughly, forcing away the rising panic that threatens to spiral out of control. Earlier, it had already crept up on him: that complicated whirlwind of images, memories, primal fears, regrets and losses – some real, some imagined. Breathing steadily, counting the breaths until it clears, he has to forcefully remind himself that in this moment – in the tent, by the warm glow of the lantern, bellies full, and the Child, safe, unharmed – he is grateful, dare he say even a little bit lucky.

For all of that, he also can’t help the bubbling of unguarded relief and utter elation that he’s felt these last two days at seeing members of his old covert here: Armorer, Paz Vizla, and even the Foundlings saved from Nevarro. It’s a miracle he knows, and the thought soothes the aching guilt he’s felt in exposing them to near annihilation.

And Sana. His respect for her is only of the highest degree. By Mandalorian standards, she is an exalted woman: honor bound, capable of defending her own, handy in a fight, and of an ancient blood and kinship line.

The strange unspoken intimacy developed during their coupling, is beyond more than the usual one between friends – to Din it was like the first stroke of the axe that shatters the ice. And seeing her unhelmed, unmasked, knowing they had conceived a child together – it stirs something primal in him.

Yes, there’s joy and relief at seeing her alive and safe, but something else too, something that lingers, unsatiated pricking under his skin.

After Din has been cleaning his weapon for a while, lost in his own thoughts, does he gather the Child has gone quiet, and he stands quickly, weapon drawn. The kid’s roster of powers, growing steadily stronger, has stopped surprising Din long ago, but it still sets him on edge that the Child can _sense_ things – that’s the best description Din has for it. Sometimes even before they happen.

The baby is immobile by the entrance of the tent, except for his ears quirking rapidly as if picking up some far away sounds.

“What’s wrong, little one?” Din says coming over to pick him up, for he makes a noise of distress and ducks his head further into the heavy blanket.

Din adjusts his helmet audio to maximum sensitivity. The Child makes another small muffled sound as he cuddles against Din’s chest, peering up at the figure now holding him.

They sit by the open flaps of the tent and listen for a while. But nothing happens. Just the blackness of the dense forest stretching around them. Further off, his helmet picks up the commotion of the Mess Hall where most, Mandalorian and Ming Po together, are gathered for their evening meal. He hears laughter and singing and the sounds of food sizzling, the crackling of the fire pits, the clinking of plates, and mugs of drink clanging together in mirth.

Then it comes through Din’s audio after a few tense beats of staring into the dark and snowy night – a sound like a wounded animal.

It’s not coming from the forest. Rather, it’s coming from the direction of a cluster of tents not too far off.

The Child mewls, squirms even while Din tightens his grip.

Knowing the Child will surely cause more trouble if left alone, Din halfheartedly ties the Child to his chest in his sling and tells him to stay quiet. The light dusting of snow falls with a soft _tink!_ on his armor as they head out into the night.

Another distressed sound comes through his audials, then fades quickly. The Child makes a whine, as if urging Din to hurry along. Someone nearby is wounded and so fearing danger, he keeps his weapon raised. His helmet leads him outside a tent not too far from his own. When he switches to infrared vision he sees the outline of a figure crouched over on the ground. Instinct kicking in, he rips open the flap and steps inside.

He’s surprised to find Sana, stripped out of her armor, sitting on the floor of her tent holding a strip of gauze to her side. She sits up startled, blaster in hand, pointing at the intruder. Shock seared across her face; it quickly turns to fury.

“Get. Out!” She shouts at him, gritting her teeth. She’s breathing heavily and there’s a sheen of sweat across her brow.

Din only puts his hands up, loosens his grip on his blaster. “It’s me,” he says. “What happened?”

She’s bent and twisted crookedly, hiding half of her torso from him. But her face is red. “I said, get out!”

“Sana!” He booms. It causes the kid on his chest to whine, distraught.

She gasps upon noticing the Child amid all of Din’s armor, and her defenses slip. Din takes the opportunity to step further into her tent and approach the woman.

“You’re hurt?’ He’s cautious, setting the Child in the harness down at her feet and sits at her side, wanting to examine the wound she’s been hiding.

But she interrupts by raising an unsteady hand and pointing to something on the other side of the tent. “In there. There’s a jar with a white paste in it. Bring it over.”

At the foot of a sleeping pallet is a large trunk. Inside it is a purple beskar helmet, with variations of markings on it similar to Sana’s own helmet. He blinks and then remembers – it’s her brother’s. Zavi, he recalls the name. She’s kept it.

He rifles through the trunk, sees clothing and blankets, a blaster and a collection of data chips, and finally the jar.

She's panting heavily when he returns to her side. The messy strands of her hair sticking to her face and neck. “It’s all right,” she says, with trying reassurance but her jaw is clenched in pain. “It’s an old wound.”

She removes the strip of gauze at her side.

It might be old, but the sight of the wound is new to him. It’s the same injury they found on the recovered bodies of Sana’s clansmen. This wound is red and swollen – a long slash that starts under her dominant arm, spreads across her ribcage, where it’s ripped open the skin. The beskar would have protected her from much worse. It’s shallow but ugly, unevenly healed, and painful looking.

“I know you’d recognize it,” she adds shakily.

There’s only one kind of weapon that can do that.

He’s angry, no, _furious_. “Where’s your bacta?” he growls at her.

Glassy eyes land on him. “No!”

“Sana, where?”

Her fingers curl like a vise on his sleeve. “No! There’s not enough – the supplies! We’re low on supplies. Use that. That helps.”

Desperately, he opens the jar, ripping off one glove so he can put the pasty substance into his hands. “So, this is what you’ve been hiding,” he says to her, none too gently. Remembering how she had yelped when he had grabbed her arm, the combination of pain and fear that flashed across her features, and now - when he looks up at her again, her eyes are lowered in shame.

Din’s anger smolders.

Her body jumps at the first contact of his fingers on her skin. She’s sweltering under his touch, the wound angry and red, like a blister. “It doesn’t hurt that often – just – Ah!” She gasps raggedly. “Some – some-t-times…it _burns_.”

The medicine starts working almost immediately. Sana’s eyes flutter shut, and she sags with relief. Her breathing evens out.

“The Ming Po make it from the bark of their trees. It’s…cooling.” she explains to him, holding up her shirt, offering him an expanded view of her side.

The Child has waddled closer, standing just at Din’s elbow with his claw outstretched towards Sana. Din freezes, holds his breath and lets him pass. The Child, without any hesitation, places his tiny claw on Sana’s side, directly on her injury. His ears droop and his eyes close in concentration. They both watch as the skin on her ribcage stitches itself back together, sealing itself shut.

She’s staring in open-mouth amazement, too, as the kid works his magic, until her burn becomes nothing but a thin, faded pink scar barely visible in the low lighting. Touching the newly healed skin she exclaims: “How – How?”

“Told you he was special,” he mumbles to a gob smacked Sana.

Seeing his work done, the Child then crawls into Din’s lap, already heaving a sleepy yawn and snuggling against him.

“He doesn’t do it all the time,” explains Din. “It seems to drain him.”

They sit for a moment in stunned silence. With a rising blush, Din realizes she’s actually more _un_ -dressed than dressed, sporting just her breeches and the lightweight chemise, which is still rucked up on one side. A swath of goosebumps bloom on her torso and he can see the side of her breast. So, he pulls the shirt to cover her again, and she shivers.

“Here, sit closer to the lamp,” he tells her. His anger is tepid, for now.

She scoots nearer, and he adjusts to sit next to her somewhat awkwardly, cradling the Child. He picks up a blanket and wraps it, one-handed, around her.

All the while the kid stares at Sana, shyly, from Din’s arm. It’s not unusual for him. He’s still getting used to being around people again, but the uptick to his ears is an encouraging, if not endearing, sign of his curiosity.

“He’s a little stranger-shy. Especially with adults,” he tells her. “Seems all right with other kids.”

Sana’s only returning the Child’s novel gaze. “Thank you, ad’ika,” she says, bringing her face down to his level and giving him a tentative smile.

It makes the Child squeak and then shuffle up Din’s arm to bury his face in the soft part between his armor by his neck, babbling something in his usual tenor of baby talk, sneaking a glance over his shoulder at the woman, and then giggling to hide his face again.

“Yes, she’s a friend,” Din answers. He means to catch her eye, as if to confirm that, but Sana’s smile is arrestingly beautiful.

It’s been over a year since he’s been this close to this woman.

He’s suddenly reminded of the drinking game they played in the hull of the Crest, after clearing off that Maker-forsaken rainy, muddy planet. Sana had come close to killing a drunk smuggler with her fists, but not before stealing a bottle of tihaar off him. They had gone back to the ship, shaken off the mud, and, riled up in anger, she had fought with him, until he pinned her to the wall. And he had – Din gulps – he had dipped his hand beneath her breeches and brought her off with two fingers inside her…

The kid’s claws have worked their way up his helmet to tug at the patchy beard on his jaw. Din brings himself sharply back to the present.

“Ow, hey kid, not too hard,” he says to the Child, but it’s too soft to be much of a reprimand.

The womp rat babbles some more.

“I know it’s nearly bedtime, but it’s not coming off right now.” He tries to cock his helmet, rolling his eyes and huffing, semi-annoyed, in Sana’s direction, as if to indicate _kids, amirite?_

“You remove it for him?”

“Just when it’s us two.” He grabs the exploring claws, still trying to work their way up the lip of his helmet. “It’s important for babies to see faces,” he adds matter of factly.

Sana seems caught, wanting to laugh outright but knowing that might be rude. “Ye-yes,” she stutters, agreeing, but still shocked. “Yes, it is.”

“We’re a clan of two.” He repeats the words of his Armorer, the designation that now defines him. He sets the Child between them, adjusting his legs so the Child can waddle over to Sana if he wants. “Show her your pendant.”

The baby stays by his father's knee, but Din helps him pulls out the pendant between his robes, and he lifts his little arms as long as they’ll stretch to show Sana.

“May I?” She asks Din, who nods. She takes the pendant from the Child’s hand and leans down to inspect it. The gesture makes a clump of her hair fall from behind her ear and into her face.

“Wow,” Sana says, endearingly to the Child, referring to the beskar Mythosaur. “That’s very nice.”

The Child puts the pendant in his mouth.

“And you eat it too! I see!” Sana chuckles.

He swats at the curtain of Sana’s long hair dangling in front of him, making a curious noise. Then does it again, gathering it in his firm grasp.

“Careful,” Din warns him. “Be gentle.”

Sana’s hair delights the Child, and he abandons his Mythosaur to grab more handfuls of it.

"It’s all right,” Sana laughs some more. “Can I hold him?”

“Sure. He’s warming up to you.”

“If I remember correctly,” she says with a glint in her hazel eyes, “you were just as cautious in getting to know me.”

It’s an embarrassed warmth that settles over him, diffuses along his spine, he tells himself, and not the images of their coupling from over a year ago that still inhabit his sporadically wandering mind.

They start up a silly game that involves Sana blowing puffs of hair gently at the Child’s face and ears to make him giggle, while the Child, untrained in this particular art, attempts to do the same back to her, but it turns into a raspberry which makes both of them erupt into snickering.

“Like this,” Sana instructs.

She makes a perfect circle with her lips, shakes her head and blows air at the Child’s face. He shrieks in delight and tries again, only dissolving into it turning into a stuttering raspberry. Even Din is moved to laugh a little.

He’s content to sit still and watch the two of them. More than content. Seeing Sana and the Child in her lap, stirs his instinct of protectiveness, coursing hotly through him and throbbing with a dull ache, deep and primal.

“Sana,” he says, softly, expectantly. Knowing that this will only turn this tender moment sour if he’s not careful.

“Hm?” She’s showing the Child a new game now, in which she fills her cheeks with air, and then, holding the baby’s tiny wrists to show him swats them against her own puffed cheeks until her mouth opens with a pop. This brings the Child to new, unforeseen levels of enjoyment.

Din fiddles, adjusts his gloves. “Sana, where’s your baby?”

His apprehension was correct: the woman before him stiffens. The game stops.

Her gaze flicks over to him immediately, and he can read the dread in her expression. But she blinks, and then turns her attention back to entertaining the Child in her lap. “Safe,” she answers. “I promise.”

They return to their game, the Child swatting at Sana’s puffed cheeks, but she’s half-heartedly involved, and evidently avoiding further looking at Din. He drops the subject, feeling her attempt to place a boundary between them all of a sudden, and the warmth of the previous few minutes all but dissipates.

He pieces together a timeline in his head. Considering her answer, he can only assume their ritual was a success, but he was not expecting her evasiveness. And how can she explain the wound on her side? Why was she trying to hide it from him? Did she fight Gideon? And when?

“Don’t you want to know?” She interrupts his thoughts. While Din can see the lines of turmoil on her face, she’s keeping her voice, light and breezy for the sake of the Child.

He just heaves a knowing sigh.

Sana sits upright, jostling the Child in her lap, spins so she can look at him properly. The light of the lantern creates a steady beam of warmth that diffuses around Sana’s hair, the messy braid, turning it amber. Half her face is in shadow, but they’re close enough he can see every freckle across her nose, how her pinched lips make a stark wrinkle hover over her mouth and in the cleft of her chin. Every detail is so new to him, he can’t stop staring.

“ _Din_ …”

“I’m not your riduur,” he says the Mando’a word for added emphasis and it makes her eyes widen. “I mean, I’m not entitled…to making any decisions. Isn’t that the Way of the ritual? That I forsake any…” he stumbles over the right word. “Ownership? I mean, the baby is yours no matter what.”

“Oh, screw the ritual!” Her outburst startles him and the Child. So, she has to soothe its large, green ears with reassuring pats.

He’s shocked by her rather ostensibly blasphemous turn of phrase. And there’s a noticeable blush emerging on her cheeks, so she’s aware of that too. Din is struck that while it may have been said in a moment of unguardedness, he gets the sense that she’s not concerned about the potential sacrilege of the rituals of their people, but more that in following the Tradition, and keeping Din at a distance, she might have unintentionally offended him, and that despite only getting to know the man over the course of a week – almost a year and a half ago – she’s protecting him. _His_ feelings.

That’s when he realizes his mistake in his line of thinking. Her evasiveness isn’t because she’s locking him out, it’s because she’s…ashamed. When he had thought he had this woman figured out, and he’s surprised to learn there’s so much more to unearth.

“Are you angry with me?” Meekly, she asks him.

“Angry?” He sees the Child in Sana’s lap, its large eyes, dark and tender, and he offers it his finger; tiny claws latch securely around it. Din chuckles warmly, hoping to dispel any further misunderstanding on both their parts. “No.”

The marks of confusion on her face give way to skepticism and then finally, understanding. “But…”

She considers, chewing her lip, gazing at a spot over his shoulder. “At other things?”

He gives her a pointed look through his helmet. “We’ll talk about your artifact-hunting later,” he gripes, half-teasing.

She winces, but nods.

Instead of relaxing back into her original spot, she nudges Din’s knee, scooting closer, to sit between his legs. Din adjusts his position. It’s not entirely easy, his knees creak as he shuffles, stretches, first one leg than another; he has to move the blaster so it’s not digging into his hip. All until he’s making a cocoon with his body around the two of them – Sana and the Child.

Unperturbed by all this, Sana settles back against his chest. Din starts at the contact, but eases when she sighs, relaxes against him. The beskar can’t be that comfortable, he thinks. But his thoughts hush as they sit quietly, lulled by the drowsy lights of the warming lamp and the soft playful fussing of the Child in Sana’s lap.

He places his hand, a steadying weight, on Sana’s knee. “So?” he asks with apprehension. “It _was_ a success?”

“Yes, Din. I think we’ve established that.” It’s said lightly, playfully. She’s staring at his hand placement. “A girl,” she adds.

Din’s breath fails him, but he’s smiling through it. “A daughter?”

“Yes, a daughter.” Unconsciously she cradles the Child closer to her breast. “With brown eyes and dark hair. So much dark hair.”

Din’s forehead falls heavily onto Sana’s shoulder, and he stifles any sounds of his own with a hard bite on his lip. Something stings sharply in his eyes, and he blinks and blinks until it goes away. A distant part of him realizes he’s gripping her knee so tightly it must be the only thing anchoring him to this moment. He wraps his other arm around her, snaking it under her arm until it’s touching on her belly – her womb – and he presses them closer together.

It’s such a small comfort, holding her, that it makes his lips tremble, unseen, and he feels like a child again.

“She’s safe,” whispers Sana, her voice breaks. “Oh, Din, I did what I thought any mother in my position would do.”

“What do you mean?” He can’t help the way his voice splinters with emotion.

The Child in Sana’s lap has gone quiet, sensing the charged nature. Din pets the back of his head.

“I – I had to hide her.”

Din inhales sharply, stomach lurching dramatically.

“I didn’t – it’s not what you think,” she rushes to explain herself. “A few months ago, we received a signal that something was hacking the Archives in the capital city on Mandalore. There are copies, of course, many here, with me. So, we went,” she paused, swallowed back a lump forming in her throat. “And Gideon was there. Stealing data from the Registers.”

So, he had been on Mandalore; it must have been just before Nevarro – and Sana had intercepted him. It all falls into place before Din: how the Moff had known all about them – him, Dune, and Karga – and the great lengths he went to uncover them.

No one in the Tribe would ever _willingly_ give information out, especially to their enemies. Their survival was in their secrecy. No, of course, Gideon had to steal it.

The familiar pang of guilt rears its ugly head. “He was looking for my name,” he tells her, tapping his forehelm against her cheek. “Gideon wants the Child. I don’t know why. Something with his powers. I think he wants to extract it.”

“Horrible,” Sana mutters. The baby in her arms coos, and gives a sleepy yawn, burrowing against her breasts and blinking blearily up at the familiar helmet of his father.

“He’s so small,” Sana chuckles dotingly at the Child’s antics tucking himself against her.

“He’s over fifty years old!”

That earns them a muffled squeak from the Child, as if arguing against the point.

Din rubs a comforting thumb up and down the Child’s face, from his wrinkled brow to the tip of his nose. It’s a habit they’ve started whenever he falls asleep in his father's arms. Humming and sighing, lulled by the soothing pets on his face, the Child soon falls into a peaceful slumber.

Sana disentangles herself from Din’s warm front to place the sleeping baby on her own bed, padding him with extra blankets. Dins sits back, stretches out his legs out, rotates his stiff shoulders. They’ve been sitting for a while, and he suspects they will continue to do so for a little while longer, so he kicks his arms back, leans onto his elbows, stares into the warming lamp, zoning out.

His mind circles back around Gideon. There was no doubt in Din’s mind that her wound was directly from the Artifact – the saber, she had called it – the injuries were consistent with what he had seen before, and her story with meeting Gideon. But she still hadn’t explained how that had happened? Had she fought with Gideon? In single combat? Why had she had to hide her baby?

When Sana returns, the blanket around her shoulders has started to slip off. Her linen chemise parted to reveal a triangle of her chest, golden skin in the mellow lights. She undoes the mostly depleted braid holding back her hair and attempts to tame it around her face, running her fingers through it, but the tresses prove mutinous.

It’s a sight that takes this Mandalorian’s breath away. He can see why the Child was so enamored with it. He longs to touch it himself.

"Is Gideon truly dead?” She lies beside him, stuffs a pillow under her side so she can prop her head up on her hand. The tops of her knees graze the outside of his thigh.

He meets her eyes – they’re brimming with hope.

“I don’t know anymore,” he finally says.

The truth of it guts him, but his Armorer’s reasonings are correct. They must take the information warily. Gideon has fooled them all before. If he’s alive, he’s in wait, like a predator just in the shadows.

“Would he know about Carlac?”

“Hardly anybody does,” Sana shook her head. “It’s not common knowledge that Death Watch was here all those years ago. They were secretive about their movements themselves. And the Empire never made it this far out. It’s part of why I picked it. It’s possible he doesn’t. But who knows?”

His mind fills with scenarios, dark and twisted, but before he goes too quickly down that black hole, Sana’s warm hand is in his, and all this thoughts scatter. She’s rubbing circles on his scarred knuckles, squeezing and pressing into his palm.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” She asks, leaning towards him. “Because earlier…”

She spares him reliving it, and Din appreciates the concern for his modesty.

“I’m all right,” he confirms, squeezing her hand back.

“Because it’s okay if you’re not,” she says sincerely. “You once told me, there’s no shame in being afraid.”

“It’s not that,” he says. But they both know it’s a lie. “It’s just…no one should have to die anymore. Not on my account."

His gut drops again, thinking of the sacrifices that have already cost him. "I don’t want to run forever. It’s not what he deserves.”

Din's eyes drift to the sleeping form of the Child on Sana’s bed. Fists clenched, his voice hardens: “Tell me how you got that wound.”

Sana’s eyes glaze over with the memory. So, she tells him in greater detail, keeping a whisper, like they’re a couple of conspirators. How they had received a transmission of the hacking, and so fearing the exposure of all the whereabouts of the scattered coverts, she and a small contingency of her most trusted warriors left Carlac and went to Mandalore. In the last wars, the Empire had shot toxins into the atmosphere to prevent habitation of life forms. The whole planet was dead – not one source of organic life, the atmosphere unstable. They were expecting to meet with astromech droids spying for the New Republic, or at the very least bounty hunters or pirates who had accidentally stumbled across a gold mine of data.

Not the last remnants of Imperial troops. There was a small skirmish. A few Mandalorians lost their lives. But Gideon appeared only at the very end.

“You should have seen his face,” she almost laughs. “He thought he was seeing a ghost. Purple armor is rather memorable.”

Din glances at the trunk at the foot of her bed, holding Zavi’s treasured beskar helmet. Their sets of armor are nearly identical. He can imagine how an outsider might get confused.

“He said he was going to cut off my head too. He tried to.” She touches her side where the wound had been healed by the Child. “But my warriors recovered me, and we fled before I could get a chance to kill him myself. They gave us a chase though.” Something dangerous lurks in the steely glint in her eyes, the set of her jaw.

Revenge is a fire built out of its own making. Din knows this. One that will burn and burn and burn. Creating a cycle of violence and destruction worse than any original offence.

“He could have killed you! Sliced your arm off with that weapon,” Din warns her, none too gently.

She’s resolute. “He’ll have to try harder then.”

He shakes his head, the rustle of beskar in the air as sharp as his annoyance, the bitter acrid taste of disappointment on his tongue.

She sits up with an abrupt movement, tears looming in her eyes. “Do you think I want this?! Do you think I want to be separated from my child?!”

“Of course not,” he bristles.

“Coverts came to me – women, children, Foundlings. Refugees, all of them. Pleading for sanctuary. While our enemies were still out there! I brought them here, not knowing the risks, not even knowing if we would be welcomed, or all killed on the spot. I sent my own child away…” But her words fail. She’s gripping the pillow in her fists so tightly that Din thinks she might rip it in two. She burrows her face in it, and her shoulders sag and shake with quashed sobs.

“It wasn’t supposed to be me,” she hiccoughs, lifting her head just enough to gulp down air. “It wasn’t – I’m not the Kryze they think I am.”

He’s unschooled in how to proceed here. Mortified, that they suddenly got to this point, Din blames himself, pressuring her to retell the narrative that led her here. And he _is_ angry at her, for putting her life in danger, for her blinding need to avenge her brother. But this – the woman’s sudden collapse, the revealing of the brittle foundation underneath the façade of toughness, of stubbornness – he knows this pain. Because it’s his own.

He comforts her in the only way he knows how to comfort the Child. “Come here,” he says, pulling softly at her shoulders. “Come here.”

Some part of her resists him.

“I don’t – I don’t want…” She sobs while pushing against him. Hands weakening, grasp falling, until she’s slowly yielding into the soft embrace of his arms around her.

Rubbing wide circles on her back, she moves to press her wet face into the kinder material of his wool cape, in-between the cold and unfeeling beskar on his chest and shoulders, just like the Child had. They stay like this until she calms down. In silence, breathing together, listening to the occasional sigh from the Child in his slumber.

“Forgive me,” Sana says abruptly pulling away. “I haven’t been myself.” She wipes at her face, her red-rimmed eyes, looking suddenly exhausted.

Din cocks his helmet at her.

“My hormones have been all over the place since Anya was born. One second, I’m crying my eyes out, the next I’m horny beyond measure. And my body does things differently. I’m still making milk. I get tired easily. They don’t tell you how much it changes you, physically, I mean. I want to be strong again; I want to _fight_. I could barely stand against Gideon and his troops.

“Thank the stars Anya was born when she was," Sana presses the heel of her palms into her tired eyes. "Can you imagine if I had faced Gideon while pregnant?"

That’s a thought Din would rather not dwell on, and his face tightens into a snarl. But then Sana laughs suddenly, sighing, a faraway look in her eyes. Din’s hostile thoughts on Gideon are banished.

"She was six weeks premature. She was so...tiny, so fragile. But she fought for her life. I suspect she gets her stubbornness from her father.”

It’s the first time she’s obliquely mentioned Din’s part in all this. His whole world narrows to this moment, in this little circle of light, the sleeping Child adjacent to them, the muted colors of Sana’s hair, and the soft, open expression on her face, beholding him.

“You kidding me? She gets it from you.” Din scoffs, fidgets. If only to stave off any other show of emotion he’s not prepared to deal with.

Sana sniffs, her reaction is comically dubious. “That’s exactly what a stubborn person would say.”

He hesitates, because he feels like he’s teetering on the precipice of something great and is looking for the trust fall. “What did you say her name was?”

She answers with a wide smile, buoyant and beautiful. “An-Talya. Anya for short.”

* * *

The Child is mercifully still snoozing as Din gathers him in his arms. He’s halfway out the tent flaps when Sana offers to accompany him back to his accommodations.

“You’re clearly exhausted.” He takes in the heavy bags under her eyes, and her wan appearance. But it’s to no avail as she’s already drawing her white cloak with the fur collar around her body.

“I like to take walks around the camp before I sleep,” she answers with a shrug.

They head out together into the cold night. The camp has mostly turned down for sleep. It must be later than Din realizes for the mess hall has emptied out, the last of the fires in their pits have been put out. There are a few stragglers still wandering around, and two Mandalorians in full body armor, smile and bid Sana and him good night as they pass.

"What you’ve put together here,” he turns to her, meaning the camp, the collection of coverts. “It’s impressive.”

Din can see the rough sigh escape her lips in the cold air. “It’s an experiment. The good news is there are more of us than I initially thought. When we first came here, it was just adults. Bringing the younglings, the Foundlings,” she dips her head at the snoozing bundle against Din’s chest, “changes things. Reminds us we can have peace. Even in our own little corner of the galaxy.”

Arriving at the domed yurt of Din’s lodgings, they stop just outside it.

Din shuffles his feet in the snow, delaying entering. “She should be with her mother,” he tells her, unafraid at how brusque he sounds. “I know you’re afraid for her. But she should be here. On Carlac.”

Sana doesn’t immediately disagree with him or attempt to defend herself anymore. She merely nods, as if acknowledge she heard him, but is staring at the large green ears, poking out of the makeshift sling on his chest. “We both made our choices. Now we have to live with them.”

She turned her head, looking out at the camp, and Din took the opportunity to observe her in profile. There was something sad in the downturn of her lips, a yearning to her pensive countenance. Like regret. But it quickly disappeared, for she suddenly shook herself as if out of a dream.

"These people require a leader,” she said, once again resuming the dignity of a Mandalorian warrior-cum-leader. “If I am to be Duchess-in-Exile, they will want to know that their heir is secure. Is safe.”

It’s been a long day, and his exhaustion is mounting. Though he has half a mind to argue against it, he finds his resolve weakening. He silently disagrees with her.

She’s shivering in her cape – the thin linen shirt beneath her cape is no match against the cold nights of Carlac. She snorts hot air so it clouds between them. “Your concern is appreciated,” she says, idly stroking the outline of the Child’s ear. “You’re too honorable, Din. We don’t deserve you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everybody, hope you like riding this ANGST TRAIN
> 
> whew.


	3. Chapter 3

Din wakes in a cold sweat. He’s breathing heavily, hot air coming in shallow pants through his nose as he jolts from his bed to the hallucinatory cries of the Child. A cold shiver runs up his back.

The fog around his head seems to lift and suddenly the tent goes quiet, as if the world were suddenly muted. Curled in his blankets, nestled on a pillow by Din’s head, is the Child, still asleep. The now awake part of Din’s brain surges to explain, and he blinks rapidly.

He falls back onto his pillow, rubbing his eyes, half in relief, half in muted horror.

There’s already a line of sunlight coming from under the tent flaps, spreading across the floor, golden, yellow, and red hues. Outside the tent, the village is coming awake.

This is the second night in a row of the same nightmare.

He tries to piece together the dream. He’s back on the Crest; there are jagged lines on the durasteel walls, the metal melted, like a blistering burn on raw skin. He’s pulling loose panels, ripping out wires for all he can hear are the cries of a child, somewhere in the belly of his ship.

Din curls to his side, placing his warm hand on the Child’s peaceful form, taking comfort in his proximity, the soft nasally little sighs, the familiar smell of his fibrous robes. Even in his sleep, the Child's claw reaches out and curls protectively around Din's finger.

Safe. Both of them.

* * *

He hasn’t seen Sana in a few days.

She’s occupied, mostly in meetings that seem to go on all day with the Ming Po Elders and the Armorer. He sees her in fleeting moments, and they only have time to exchange cursory glances across a crowded table, or while passing each other in the campgrounds – though not heated, there is an intensity there, an intentionality. Like she’s trying to convey something to him without speaking, without betraying anything. Yet, his attempts to get her alone again are fruitless, for each time he finds an opening to approach her, she immediately becomes preoccupied, almost to the point of being flustered that he would disturb or interrupt her. And he gets a distinct sense that she might even be avoiding him.

There’s something that catches his attention about her, even in a room full of formidable Mandalorians – magnetic, instinctual. A hyperawareness. Like every fiber of his being is pulled, gravitating, towards her, and the daughter she carried.

His daughter.

He tries to wrap his head around that: his and also _not_ -his. Two radically different truths, welded together, form an entirely new, emergent one, inseparable from his bond to the woman who occupies such space, not only in his own private thoughts, but also her physical presence – not just the knowledge of her, but the reality.

One morning when Din enters the Mess Hall to drop the Child off with the other younglings, and as becomes his habit recently he immediately picks her out of the crowd. She’s sitting with a Ming Po Elder, a woman named Myla, leaning closely to listen but resting her elbow on the table, knuckles gracing her bare cheek – striking the remarkable balance between attentiveness and repose; but Din feels two hazel eyes are tracking his every movement across the room. When he returns her gaze, he’s struck by the intimacy of the contact – there’s no possible way she could know exactly where his eyes are behind the visor, even from this distance, but she holds it, for but a second before quickly averting away, turning fully to concentrate on whatever Myla was telling her.

So, he leaves the Child for now with his usual gaggle of various children that have become besotted with the womp rat and took to fawning over him excessively. (Including sneaking him extra rations of bone broth, so much so that the kid took to skipping dinner altogether and it made Din so worried for a whole two days until he figured it all out. He had to reprimand the younglings responsible, but immediately took pity on them for they were only committing the egregious sin of not being able to say no to the Child’s shameless, if not downright adorable, demands. It quickly blew over, and the young Mandalorian caretaker of the Tribe’s Foundlings assured Din that it wouldn’t happen again.)

The Child still made a show of parting with his father every morning, and Din always says the same comforting words and affirmations, dipping his forehelm to gently tap against the little one’s brow. Until soothed, the Child taps his claws on the beskar, smiles finally, and toddles off, stumbling over his too long robes.

* * *

The Mandalorians are rebuilding the village at a rapid pace. Large transports of timber from the healthy forests arrive nearly every day and are immediately measured, cut and sent for construction.

While the Mandalorians are not laborers, they are strong and there are many of them. Some are even skilled in craftsmanship and artistry.

They’re working on main buildings first – the Mess Hall being the first one completed with Ming Po collaboration. Other, smaller sites, such as an Armory and a weapons locker are only half-finished, furnished with materials from the collected coverts, including the Tribe’s resources from Nevarro.

After dropping the Child off that same morning, he goes to visit it, just as the Armorer is hanging the Mythosaur skull over the entrance.

They’ve nearly finished constructing what is intended to be a fully operational forge for smelting and weaponry designing. He’s surprised to find how well its functioning. Much of the limited supply of the beskar has already been repurposed into repairing and crafting new pieces.

“Are you finding your way around here?” The Armorer asks him, upon conclusion of a tour of the new facilities.

“Trying to,” he admits, sitting before her, hands on his knees, while she organizes her smelting tools in a large iron chest. “It’s taking some getting used to.”

“You spent many years as our Tribe’s beroya, why should you not enjoy this? Your Foundling is already quite popular.”

“That he is,” Din agrees with a small chuckle. “But it’s strange, unfamiliar.”

“What is?” The Armorer asks, with a curious tilt, pausing briefly in her work.

Din sighs. “The peace.”

The older woman manages a brief nod but goes back to her tools.

“I don’t know where I’m needed,” Din continues. “Sana hasn’t given me any indication that –”

The Armorer interrupts: “Your place in this community is for you to discover, not for anyone to assign.”

“I’m a bounty hunter, that’s all I’ve ever known. That’s all I’ve been able to provide for the Tribe. What use are my skills on Carlac?”

“A bleak assessment,” the Armorer huffs. “You’ve never doubted your skills before.”

Din cannot answer that. His mind is too occupied with the dreams he’s been having – though not helpless, the Child is still learning the true extent of his powers and at times seems unprepared for the wider, cruel world that Din knows so well. If indeed species age so differently, Din knows he will die long before the Child has matured enough to live on its own. The future daunts him. He almost wishes for a bounty to give him distraction.

The Armorer speaks to his feelings, as if she knows his mind.

“This your fear talking,” she says. “You cannot give words to it because you’ve never had so much at risk. What use is peace time to a warrior? I’ll tell you: the warrior that survives, is the warrior that adapts. You did once before as a boy on Mandalore. What makes Carlac so different? Tell me: have you been practicing in the Rising Phoenix?”

Din winces, shakes his head.

The Armorer’s helmet tilts, but not disapprovingly. “Then you better get to it. I think Vizla should be well matched as your trainer. There may still be a place yet for you on Carlac.”

* * *

Din finds the heavy infantrymen leading a training regime for Foundlings in a dilapidated Ming Po structure that has been left abandoned for presumably decades. The irony is not lost on him seeing the group of Mandalorians, the people responsible for burning the building down nearly thirty years prior, now using it to teach younglings how to fight.

As Din enters, he hears the echoes shouts of Paz’ booming voice, throwing out directions to a group of his students. They hold blunt sticks as stand-ins for real weapons and are clustered in twos practicing a series of movements with each other. Paz circles them. While the man is tall and broad in an intimidating way, there is a carefreeness to his stature here that makes him almost unrecognizable to the Paz that Din knew on Nevarro, when they were under shelter all the time.

It’s one more benefit of Carlac, of the though still imperfect and rough peace that has been built here: they don’t have to hide anymore.

The men are acquaintances, out of mere necessity. Growing up together as peers in the Fighting Corps, they often butted heads both on and off the training mats that made for a certain kind of respect towards each other – one always laced with a challenge, as if silently urging each other to be better, stronger, faster. Other than that, Paz had a knack for getting just under Din’s skin, and the man was overly fond of using it to his advantage, if only to rile Din up.

The outburst in the covert over a year ago had quickly been forgiven and forgotten when Paz and the rest of the Mandalorian covert showed up to rescue him from those bounty hunters. While Din was never so bold to admit such a thing to his companion, the comradery of their youth returned, untainted, sealed finally by the send-off Paz sent him, saluting him in the skies over Nevarro. That was the last Din saw of Paz until Carlac.

The Foundlings exchange curious glances at Din’s arrival to their training, but mostly seem focused on their sparring lessons.

The blue-armored man claps Din’s shoulder upon approaching him; it could almost be construed as a gesture of fondness, if it wasn’t hard enough to rattle Din’s teeth. At times Vizla did not know his own strength.

At the conclusion of their lesson, Paz dismisses the students and trains with Din for the afternoon.

“You’re throwing your body weight around too much,” Paz comments after one particularly painful land in a snowbank just outside the tattered building. Din rolled and caught himself on his knees, the engine on his back sputtering.

“You have to be subtle with your movements. You’re not riding a Mythosaur – it’s a jetpack.”

He’s lost count of how many times he landed in the snow, flailing wildly, while the engine jerks him around. He was glad no one had thought to come watch. He had thought they were attracting enough attention, what with Paz roaring directions matched only by the jetpack’s engines and Din’s clanking armor. Paz wasn’t helping, occasionally falling into bursts of laughter at each wild turn that sent Din careening off into the air, cape flapping, getting caught around his head.

Paz’ own jet pack is leaning against a tree and he goes over to retrieve it, and with a precise, practiced movement he attaches it neatly onto his backplate. He returns to Din, and dips back into his instructor’s voice.

“The jetpack is just an extension of you. The Mandalorian with a jetpack _is_ a weapon. How did you dogfight Gideon’s TIE with it?”

“I don’t know,” Din blustered, getting annoyed with all his failures. “I wasn’t thinking…”

“Exactly. You’re overthinking it.” He quirks a knowing nod at him, sighs. “You always do.”

Before Din realizes what’s happening Paz is igniting his jetpack and barreling towards him. Din defends himself at the last moment, arms up to brace himself, catching onto the fabric of Paz’ under armor. Their feet drag and skid in the snow, trading blows as they fly across the field.

Then Din ignites his own, shooting them upwards, narrowly avoiding a collision with a large tree trunk. The two Mandalorians are taken sky bound, still grappling with each other. Din’s vaguely aware that the scratching sound in his audials is from the tree branches and leaves hitting the beskar, as they rise, breaking the surface of the canopy with a sputter from the engines. Paz gets his elbow around Din’s neck and is pulling him tightly, forcing him into a chokehold; Din’s sending fist after fist to Paz’s helmet and any other place he can get a good kick in.

Paz blocks all of them breezily, and his laughing and whooping outshines Din’s various groans and grunts as they soar above the tree line, the pink and red leaves stretching out around them. Din is aware of mountains in the distance, its white peaks almost shrouded with heavy cloud cover. The brilliant Carlac sun, glinting off the snow and treetops temporarily blinds him. He hears the telltale sign of his engine fading, and Paz’ jetpack goes quiet as well.

They’re suspended for a second that stretches too long, and they hover in the air. Then gravity kicks in with a brutal reminder and the two of them are suddenly pulled back to terrain.

Din yelps, finally digging his elbow into a softer part of the other man’s armor, smacking his ribs.

Paz cries back, like some suicidal thrill seeker: “All you!”

Din’s stomach plummets, as quickly as his own body through space. The crazy kriffing idiot means to let Din take control.

They’re already falling through the canopy of the trees, the branches unforgiving, but largely blunted against the beskar, and Din’s heart is pounding in his head, but he wills the damn jetpack to just for once just cooperate. Clinging to the blue armored man, he shifts his weight to brace on his legs, touches the control on his vambrace and – Maker above!

The engine ignites, merely feet before impact, slowing their descent. Paz is a dead weight along Din’s front, and too heavy to hold properly. So, they’re dragged down, spinning, sizzling, into the snow. Their impact kicks up a fresh spray of powder into the air.

The two Mandalorians lie still until they catch their breath.

“See, verd’ika,” Paz uses the diminutive form with an emphatic taunt. “See what happens when you stop thinking.” He thumps Din’s chest plate with an open palm, who just groans and rolls onto his stomach.

Din lifts his neck just enough to shoot Paz a death glare through the visor.

“What’s with the look! I knew you were gonna get it!? Can’t have anything happening to you while you’re on Consort duties. Kryze would put my head on a spike.”

There’s a few loose branches from the tree they bulldozed through caught in his cape and Din wrenches them free.

"What Consort duties?” It’s the second time Paz has called him. _Consort._ He blushes furiously as he considers the full implication of that meaning. “I’m not a Consort!”

“Whatever you say, Consort.” Paz lifts one leg to stand, but Din is already lunging him, fist raised.

“Not a Consort!” He snaps, and it’s like they’re teenagers again.

They land roughly in the snow again. Din’s angry that Paz would be so reckless with their training and makes sure he gets the message by sending angry hooks and nasty uppercuts his way. Din receives a punch to the side that doubles him over with a grunt, and Paz’ helmet gets clonked with a strategic knee. It’s dirty, uncomfortable with the added weight of the jet packs; no honor in the brawl at all.

And it goes on far longer than necessary. But soon enough the two men are exhausted by their round of fisticuffs, and sprawl in the snow once again.

“Didn’t we train together in the Rising Phoenix?” Paz asks him, rising to stand.

“Yes! As a _boy_!” Din emphasizes by pounding a fist into the snow, but he’s too tired for it to do any real damage. He’d been a lot smaller then and more resilient to getting knocked on his back.

“Seems you’ve forgotten then,” Paz drawls.

There’s a tug under Din’s armpits, and then he’s in the air and righted on his own two feet. The man flushes at the way his larger companion can scoop him like nothing, armor and all. Din is a tall man, but he’s absolutely dwarfed by Paz Vizla who stands a whole head above him even. He has to tilt his neck, visor trained defiantly on the taller one.

If Din’s memory serves, the dusty blue color of his armor is almost identical to the man’s eyes underneath the helm. “Not everything,” he mutters.

Paz go uncharacteristically quiet and still. “If you’re referring to what happened two and half decades ago, Djarin, I’m afraid we haven’t had enough tihaar for a repeat.”

“I wasn’t!” Din jumps in, face red, and not just from his exertions and frustrations with his training.

“And I was under the impression you were already spoken for.”

“Oh, come on, we were teenagers! Not like we made a habit out of it.”

“What? You mean you didn’t go around telling everyone your first kiss was with a Vizla?” Paz is mocking again, bloated with hubris.

“You were not my first –”

“Yeah, but I was your best, don’t deny it.”

“That’s not what I was –” Din grows hot with ire at Paz’ typical bravado, and turns around and stalks away, heading back to the village. The lesson is done for the day.

Paz catches up with him, heavy beskar clicking softly at Din’s heels. Din expects a rejoinder from the proud man, but instead Paz’ teasing curtails. He appears almost thoughtful as he pulls up by Din’s side.

“When was the last time you saw so many Mandalorians together like this?” Paz asks him.

Din only shakes his head, looks at a spot on his boot as they trudge through the snow. “Probably back on Mandalore,” he says after some consideration.

“Doesn’t it feel like then?”

“Like what?”

Paz shrugs, lopsided and ungainly. “I don’t know. Hopeful?”

Hope – small, but poignant, like a flame for which Din feels compelled to hold close to his heart, long thought snuffed out.

“Didn’t take you for the sentimental type,” Din prods his peer with a half-hearted sneer, and even Paz’ staggering clap on Din’s beskar is missing the usual Vizla-punch.

The walk back to the main part of the village is in agreeable silence. They barely make it out of the woods before the two of them hear a distant rumble, and their attention is turned skyward.

A Mandalorian-built transport ship streaks over their heads, shaking the branched and the forest around them; its thrustors loud enough to reverberate like thunder around them. Paz lets out, what Din could only describe as, a war cry at the sight of it. He bounces off the ground, soaring off on his jetpack towards the direction of the large ship. Din is slow to follow; he considers lighting his jetpack, but given how his afternoon has been going, he reconsiders, sighs, and grumbling all the while jogs after Paz.

* * *

There’s a merry thrum to the air in the Ming Po village when Din returns – all because of the arrival of the ship. Catching whispers and excited murmurs around him, he gathers that it’s a supply run that got lucky, bringing with it Mandalorian delicacies and liquor. Not only that but much needed generators and fuel for power supplies.

It doesn’t take Din long to find the white and purple clad figure of Sana amidst the hubbub of the unloading, speaking in low tones to a Mandalorian in full black armor.

The Commander’s black beskar is shiny and glaring against the snowy white backdrop of Carlac. There are three stripes on her pauldron designating her rank. He had last seen her on Nevarro, a protector of Sana’s during the Ritual.

Sana sees him first, her expression neutral, but she waves him over to where she is speaking to the woman in black armor about her journey. “There was no trouble?”

“None, whatsoever. I got an even better deal this time. That tihaar wasn’t easy to find, but I pulled a few strings…” The woman pauses upon seeing Din approach.

“You remember the Commander of my blackguard?” Sana prompts Din.

While they started off on the wrong foot, the two of them parted on good terms, and Din was glad to see that some members of Sana’s original loyal covert members are still around. He greets her with a proffered forearm. “I do.”

After a moment of assessing Din, she cocks her helm sharply at Sana with a rich bark of laughter. “The Consort?! My lady, Carlac has made you soft.”

Sana turns a hue unseen this side of the galaxy; it takes Din a second to notice it but he thinks the pink color is especially pretty on her freckled cheeks.

“We were never properly introduced: Se-Lenah of Clan Rook,” the black-armored woman shakes Din’s extended vambrace warmly. “Su cuy'gar, bounty hunter. I almost didn’t recognize you in your new armor. It is most impressive.”

Sana clears her throat loudly, getting back to business. “Divvy up the fuel cells and the generators for transport to our neighbors. I plan on making the exchange myself.”

While Sana continues speaking, dispensing more instructions, Se-Lenah makes notations on a datapad with it and they walk among the crates as they’re being unloaded. They point out the ones of liquor and food for the kitchen and Mess Hall – the tihaar chiefly of prize – which Paz Vizla has taken control of carrying himself.

“The Ming Po do little travel and trade with off-world currency, so our credit supply is useless here,” Sana explains to Din. “They would rather barter with us. So, in exchange for medical supplies, we are giving them batteries and fuel cells. It means Se-Lenah has to source it off-world. Often black market because we can catch a fairer price there. But it’s far from watching eyes.”

She opens one of the crates and examines the contents: spices for cooking Mandalorian dishes.

“Small comforts,” Sana says, her eyes dancing between her Commander and Din. “But we could use it.”

“Almost like being home, isn’t it?” Says Se-Lenah.

It’s a sentiment shared by others apparently, for a small crowd has gathered the crates of tihaar, where Paz is rationing them out to their fellow Mandalorians, who cheer at seeing their familiar food and drink in such quantities.

Before Se-Lenah goes off to take care of the fuel cells for trade, the woman ducks her helm, sheepishly, suddenly guarded. “My lady, there is one more thing…”

She flicks her attention to Din briefly, and it speaks volumes. Din is on the verge of dismissing himself and letting the women discuss in private, but Sana’s already waving her hand as if nothing’s wrong.

“He’s been briefed,” she says.

Din trades befuddled looks between the two of them.

Se-Lenah continues. “The package is still in good hands, I hear. Healthy, adapting well.”

There’s a hint of something about to burst behind Sana’s eyes, her mouth forms a smile but falters, and she nods roughly. With her next breath, the rigidity of her shoulders relax, and all the tension erases off her face.

“Good to hear,” she says, but her voice cracks slightly. “That’s very good to hear.”

She lifts her gaze, resumes her luminous and commanding presence once again. “Tell the chefs to prepare something spicy for tonight’s dinner. The arrival of these goods demands a celebration, don’t you think?”


	4. Chapter 4

There’s a full moon on Carlac that night. A huge, orange orb on the horizon, just peeking through the dense red-leaved tree cover.

There is much cheer around the camp, joined only the fragrance of Mandalorian spiced stew, tiingilar, wafting over the tents as it cooks. The smell of it, sizzling over the open flames in a large pot brings with it a certain nostalgia – a remembrance of things past that make the few Mandalorians gathered on Carlac, nearly one hundred of them in total, to a state of melancholic joy.

While, there is much laughter, shouting and drinking, as the bottles of tihaar are opened and passed around the adults (or by overeager teenagers, who immediately gagged and chocked on the strong substance), there was a solemnness to the affair, too.

There's a sense of the fragility of this peace, this happiness. That the light in the vast expanse of darkness could be put out at any moment. Snuffed from existence. The future precariously uncertain, the past a heavy weight, an indelible etch in armor. A reminder of the costs of survival.

* * *

“You have to eat something!” He softly scolds the wiggling Child in his grasp.

But the Child’s face contorts in displeasure at the heat and spice of the Mandalorian tiingilar. It was Din’s first reaction to the stew as well when he was a Foundling. He turns his head away from the approaching spoon, ears flapping with the force of it. The contents of the bowl get nearly dumped by the quite powerful whack the little one lands on it.

Din sighs, troubled.

The bonfire the Mandalorians built is nearly as tall Din. It has already been burning for several hours. Everyone had helped in the service of the little “celebration”, as Sana was calling it. Tihaar was poured, Mandalorian food was made; some gathered wood; younglings strung lights.

Even Din’s Foundling, passing from one adoring set of arms to another was playing in the fun of it. At one point he had found a small branch on the ground and offered it to the growing pyre with his own toothy grin. For that he received an appalling amount of spoiling praise from one Paz Vizla, who lifted the tiny green body and threw him in threw him into the air, before catching him again in his wide arms to a chorus of uproarious giggles and squeals from the ad’ika.

Cuteness only gets him so far. Now, he was being obtusely stubborn, refusing his meal because of the content’s spiciness.

“Shall I fetch some bone broth?”

It’s Sana. She’s pouring herself a generous amount of tihaar into a mug, standing before Din and observing his follies with the Child. She drops the bottle to Din’s feet and settles to sit beside him, leaning forward on her elbows, the mug warming between her hands.

She is looking expectantly at Din, the corner of her lips tugging upwards. It’s a movement that settles in Din’s groin with an inviting rush. An awkward moment of silence passes, and then he remembers she asked him a question.

“Oh, no, he has to at least _try_ it first.”

Sana agrees. “Mandalorian tastes are an acquired one.”

He feels her gaze still on him. “I haven’t asked yet: how you’re faring here?”

To be honest, she hadn’t been asking Din much of anything in the past few days and wonders why she’s suddenly decided to be on friendly terms with him. Din thinks of the conversation he’s had with his Armorer. It’s unlikely she would broach the subject to Sana, knowing both women were too discreet to do such a thing.

He hesitates before he speaks, knowing the woman could probably see through any lies or mistruths.

“Still figuring it out,” he answers honestly.

They understand each other. “We all are. I want to remind myself that we deserve this somehow. That we’ve done enough fighting. I suppose we can’t change who we are.”

She’s looking at the group of them – armored men and women. It’s the beskar, the weapons. Their traditions. Knowing she would never ask any of them to give it all up, to settle for something else – what’s the worth of a sacrifice? One way of thought for another one? Can peaceful warriors ever be reconciled?

“The warrior that survives is the warrior that adapts,” he parrots what his Armorer had told him earlier that day.

“You hear that ad’ika,” Sana dips to the Child in his lap, still unhappy with his dinner. She makes a show of rolling her eyes. “Your protestations aren’t going to cut it.”

The baby tilts his head, looking to Din for confirmation, like he can’t believe he’s expected to eat _that_.

“Why…?” He stops himself, gives himself a rustle of his beskar, is if to disrupt the very thought from his head.

But, too late, he’s captured Sana’s attention.

“Why,” he starts again, “do they call me Consort?”

Sana’s mug halts midway to her mouth. “ _Who’s_ calling you that?!”

He shifts the fussy baby to his other arm. Sana dithers – caught between two opposing forces of her will. She tries to laugh, but it falls flat. “It’s an honorary title, nothing more. But it’s anachronistic – hasn’t been used in centuries.”

Her head shakes emphatically, and she takes a sip. He’s pensive beside her. The Child frets, and Din feels his own belly growl in hunger.

“What about the duties?”

Sana spits half the gulp she’s taken back into her mug. “Duties?”

Din squirms, adjusts his legs before him. “Vizla said something about…”

“Vizla! That traditionalist bastard!” Sana curses lightly. “Din, you have nothing to worry about.”

The Child grabs both their attention with a loud whine. Sana and Din are brought out of the shared thought of exactly what those duties entail, to give him an amused look. He delights when the awareness is on him again, and begins babbling excitedly at Sana, making madcap gestures with his short arms.

Sana grins sensibly at the baby as if she understood him perfectly. “Yes, quite right."

The Child is happy someone finally agrees with him.

"He’s letting me know that he would prefer the non-spicy bone broth,” Sana translates. “And also, wants to have a sip of whatever I’m drinking.”

Din nearly spills the bowl on his accord when she flashes him a coy wink.

“Yes, I’m sure he would.” Din recovers to stare pointedly at the baby in his lap, in half mocking frustration.

It makes Sana burst out laughing. It’s a musical, genuine sound and it only encourages the Child to giggle too, which doesn’t help Din at all. She hides her mirthful smile behind her mug, takes a strong sip. Her gaze falls admiringly on Din’s form.

“You seem different.” She’s sucking in her bottom lip to chew on it. It’s a gesture he’s picked up on, seems to betray the inner workings of her mind.

He’s not sure how to take her meaning.

“When I met you…before…you were, well, I don’t know, less patient. Perks of having a Foundling, I suppose.” The loose ends of her braid dance as wildly as the bonfire as she shakes her head. “You must think me tediously silly for saying such things.”

She stands curtly. “Let me get –” she starts.

It’s all at the exact same moment that Din’s saying, “I don’t…”

Catching each other off guard, they freeze.

Sana breaks first, dispensing the tension with an embarrassed chuckle. “Look, whoever is calling you Consort is having a laugh.” Her eyes fall away from his visor, dances around the other Mandalorians sitting and eating around them, as if she suddenly remembered they were not in a private setting.

Then, her regard returns to him, lingers. “I’ll get that bone broth.”

As she’s gone, the Mandalorians around the bonfire break into song. It strikes the Child’s interest immediately, forgetting his empty stomach to gape at the crowd of people bursting into a tune. He claps his claws along to it.

It’s a song Din hasn’t heard in a long while, and though it’s been decades, he’s surprised to realize that he knows every word.

The song begins with passion and bloodlust. The tempo is fast and striking, like the clanging of brazen blades in battle, the whistles of blaster fire. Almost lewd in innuendo, the tale is woven of a hot-blooded warrior full of _shereshoy_.

The Mandalorian voices carry far and wide. The blanket of stars around them like their own private audience.

When the song ends, it does so on a lamenting, wistful note. Heavy and plodding in tone, like the weary footfalls of a battle-worn solider returning from the field, remembering the names of the dead. Though forged as warriors, they are as malleable as the metal of their second skin. Wrought by the strength of their hands. Sealed by the fires of their shared history. The infernos of the forge are the true beacon, calling them home, back to the very fires that made them.

The fire rages, sending smoke and ash from the wet wood high into the air. The embers turn to powder in the gentle breeze, singeing as soon as it comes to rest on the snow. A single stray ash lands on Din’s sleeve, at the crease of his elbow, burning orange and hot, before blinking, sparking – like a warrior facing death one more time.

Sana returns, joins in with the song. Her singing voice rich and melodic. She crouches before him, holding out the bone broth for the Child, and her leg kicks open, bumps his knee. Din watches as Sana blows the bit of dust off his sleeve, sending it back into the wind.

* * *

A wrestling match between Paz Vizla and Se-Lenah Rook erupts. They’re actually quite evenly matched – both tall and broad but they move fast for their size. A blur of blue and black in the night. Se-Lenah feints one direction then kicks him roughly on his shins to knock him to his knees.

Sana cheers on her Commander. “Having second thoughts about your bet?”

The crowd groans as Paz topples the black-armored woman and they go rolling into the snow.

“I’ll double it.”

Sana’s skepticism is obvious. “You haven’t seen her fight.”

“Nope. But I’ve seen Paz.”

Her nose scrunches. “Well, you still have time to change your mind.”

Paz ends up yielding– Se-Lenah wins by pinning him in a figure-four move. The proud man, undone by her thighs, taps out before he can lose face. She’s met with thunderous cheers from the gathered Mandalorians, and collects her winnings.

Paz stumbles over to where Din and Sana are sitting together. “Who is this mesh’la warrior who has defeated me? And where have you been hiding her, Kryze?”

Sana only offers the defeated man the bottle of tihaar. “She’s out of your league.”

The man guzzles the drink, tipping the bottle just enough under the lip of his helm. “Impossible!” Paz booms, cracking his large neck. He moves away, in the direction of Se-Lenah and her adoring crowd

Before he makes his exit to put the baby to bed, Sana also hands him the bottle of tihaar, encourages him to have a few sips while he’s in the privacy of his tent. He won’t but takes the bottle anyway.

He’s thinking of the way her knee was resting against his, her body sidled up close. She has a knack for tucking herself into every empty space around him, either in his mind, or physically. It’s too easily done, and he wonders if he ever had any control over it – not when they were completing the ritual, nor now. She’s woven herself into the tapestry of his life, intentionally or not – their lives inextricably linked.

The baby is asleep by the time he’s back at his own dwelling. Din sets the Child among the blankets on the large sleeping pallet, fluffs the pillow around him. He removes his helmet and taps his head against the sleeping Child’s form.

The bottle of tihaar sits, temptingly, on the low bench in the middle of the room, next to a fresh bowl of tiingliar. He pauses before it, looks back one more time at the snoozing kid. Then, he lifts the bottle to his lips.

* * *

The peace, the freedom, it’s…nice, he dares call it, though unfamiliar, it’s providing him, and the Child, a break from their constant state of uncertainty. The singularity of every night aboard an empty ship long lost.

For tonight though, he’s preoccupied only with the sound of crunching snow and heavy armor beside him, as the comfortable presence of the figure in white and purple pulls even with him in their brisk walk. They’ve left the village and the bonfire and have wandered into the dark forest. It’s not nearly as menacing as the dense canopy would have you believe – the woods are teeming with an energy, a soft hum, gentle, mystical and idyllic.

He’d only taken a few sips of the tihaar in his own tent, the concoction nearly burning a hole in his throat, and now, quarter of an hour later, he’s feeling its effects – heady and warming, a fuzziness in his limbs. He can’t remember the last time he’s had his defenses down low enough in order to even consider taking a drink of alcohol around so many people.

“I’d like to see more of Carlac,” he tells the woman beside him.

Two shining eyes, large and curious, stare back at him in the night. Rosy, cold-bitten cheeks illuminated by the moon, still hanging resplendent overhead.

“I’d like to come with you,” he insists. “Tomorrow, to deliver the generators.”

She’s nodding along. “My plan was to leave at first light, but…”

The sounds of the carousing bonfire along with more singing can still be heard some distance away. No one is going to bed early.

He gives her a sidelong glance. They’re alone. Perhaps it’s the moonlight, or the forest stroll. More likely it’s the tihaar, but he lets his own prying get the better of him.

“Okay, really, what does it mean?”

She’s genuinely lost. “What?”

“Consort.”

Sana’s eyeroll is enormous. “I told you, it’s anachronistic. It’s…” He can read the utter mortification on her face, which she tries to hide. At least she doesn’t mince her words. “It was an honorary given to the Ritual Breeder.”

Silence befalls them. Sana is doing her best to avoid making eye contact of any significance to him, in case he might read into it. Their steps fall in unison together. The forest suddenly feel alive with energy, seeping in around them, almost creating a cocoon, warm and tender around them.

“I see,” he says coarsely.

“Obviously, no one expects that anymore. Even the line of Duchesses of more recent history abandoned the title, opting for the more democratic…”

He recognizes the tone she’s fallen into – he’s about to get a history lesson.

Before she can really get her lecture going, her voice is dimmed by a loud whistling that pierces the swollen air of the dense forest around them, and the whole woods, the earth itself trembles with a gigantic quake. The darkness gives way to light, and Din, mind blank, grabs Sana’s waist, hauls her behind cover and throws his body over her.

His mind swims with images of blood and chaos. Once again, he’s looking down the barrel of a blaster pointed to his head, a droid’s shadow standing menacingly overhead. There’s screaming and crying, and Din’s head spins with a flash of the Child, dead before his eyes. A sickening spell washes over him and he’s pushing down the need to vomit as his world reels.

A hum in the background came to the forefront of his attention, and he realizes there’s a woman’s voice, speaking lowly to him. But he can’t make out the words, the wound on the back of his head throbs.

He can see his parents – they're running, pulling him tightly by the wrist, dragging him along. The strong arms of his father enveloping him. The soft cries of his mother. Cannons and blaster shots firing around him. Someone’s shouting his name over and over and –

He snaps, like a cord cut loose. His breathing shallow and loud in his ears.

“Is it Gideon? Did he find us?”

But Din doesn’t hear the sound of blaster fire, or more explosions. In fact, the only thing he can hear is raucous laughter and the sounds of more singing. Sana’s form before him wavers, flickers into view. She’s wrestling the blaster out of his hand. He doesn’t remember grabbing it.

“Din! Din! But your blaster away!”

Finally, he looks at her. “What’s happening? What was that?”

“You’re safe. We’re safe.” Her voice is soothing, sincere.

The laughter nearby turns to cheers and another whistle and a flash of light, and this time Din sees the whole thing. With a loud pop, a trail of light explodes over the forest, bursting into a spray of sound and color. Not bombs. Not blaster fire. Din’s chest reverberates with the aftershock of it. Fireworks.

“S’all right. Safe,” Sana repeats. Din nearly sobs in disbelief.

“I _told_ them not to light them. I’m so sorry.” Sana’s steely grip on his blaster arm is merciless. “Put the weapon away, Din.”

Calming down, he sheathes it with an unsteady hand.

“Are you all right? Breathe with me.” Soft pulls at the tight tunic and cape, reveal bare skin under his jaw. She had removed her gloves and is blanketing her hand sympathetically across his galloping pulse point.

“One more, in and out.”

His body follows her direction without any input from his mind. As the next inhale, he chokes sharply on it because he realizes he has her pressed flush against a tree trunk, and she’s iron-hot all along his front. He wants to scramble away, blushing at the impropriety of it all. But his legs aren’t working properly, and he’s got a powerful grip on her hips that seem to have a will of their own.

“S’okay, Din. Breathe. Shh, that’s it. Just fireworks.” Her exhale brings with it an almost sickly-sweet aura, like blossoming trees, and Din sees her eyes are dark, colored in by her worry and concern.

His relief is so immaculate and prompt, it’s like cold water thrown over his whole body, slithering down his clothes. He blinks, looks sharply down at where they’re bodies are touching, beskar-to-beskar.

“I was – I was…are _you_ all right?”

Sana quirks her brows in a telling manner, flashing briefly to look up at the wide tree she’s pressed against, and the branches swaying, observing nonjudgmentally overhead. “Evidently,” she says dryly.

An inferno of heat pools in his belly, frothing wildly. He’s thinking of how she blew the piece of ash off his sleeve, how her face had bent over him, her lips making a perfect ‘o’…

She’s still got the soft pads of her fingers on his neck. Neither move. A hush settles over them. Sana swallows.

Din’s eyes trail its movement, the mouth pinching like a bow, the bob of her jaw. He licks his own dry lips. There’s an almost piquant flash in her eyes when he releases one hand, stiff leather creaking as he flexes, and glides his knuckles along her cheekbone. Her head snaps back against the timber with a dull thwap and she gasps.

At the next rocket that shoots above them, her face is momentarily lit up and Din can see her whole unraveling expression as he touches her. Pupils blown wide with arousal, Sana’s are eyes almost black, swallowing the hazel color of her irises. Her lips part and his index finger traces around them, the worn leather oddly gentle on her delicate skin.

A sharp inhale sounds needy in the night air, shrill and dangerous, and it’s only after a second does he realize it’s his own hissing through his teeth. He follows the path his finger makes, pressing along her chin and then down the column of her throat. The thick material of her duraweave flight suit catches on his glove. He’s emboldened by her heated glance to palm down the front of her beskar cuirass, place his hand right over the dip in the center – her Iron Heart.

The painted metal is cool in the night air, in sharp distinction to the heat radiating off Sana. Her breath creates clouds of moisture that billow between them, mirroring the waves coming off his own frenzied touch-starved body, roaring like a bonfire in his groin. Din’s cock makes an aroused twitch underneath his many layers.

He wants to say something. Anything. But he’s too aware that the moment will collapse on itself. A star devoured by gravity.

Another firework makes a booming noise over the camp.

Din’s trembling, joints stiff, as he pulls away with a frown. Their hands drop, almost remorsefully from each other.

“The Child,” he remembers. “The noise – he’d be afraid.”

Sana nods, face shining in understanding.

They race back. As the two Mandalorians quickly weave through the tents, all are wide awake around them, startled by the sounds of the celebration continuing. They pass families and groups covering their ears, or laughing and cheering. The sky lights up with loud sizzles and crackles.

His Foundling is crying on the sleeping pallet, holding his claws over his flattened sensitive ears. Din drops roughly before him, to wipe the tears and wetness off the small face with the soft edge of his cape and gathers the whimpering little bogwing into his arms, wrapping him in the wool blanket.

“See, look,” Din takes the Child just outside their yurt, pointing to the dazzling flower-shaped firework. “It’s just for fun. See? No one’s hurt.”

The little one watches, confusion evident on his little brow, and his ears twitching. He sniffles pathetically, a piteous sound that clenches around Din’s heart, makes his face contort underneath his helmet.

Why did he delay? He should have come right back here! Why did he dawdle?

He rocks the kid gently in his arms, guilt dropping like a stone, heavy in his chest.

Sana hasn’t left his side. She bends before the Child’s face and offers him a comforting smile, reassuring him there’s no danger. “Did those crazy, ole Mandalorians scare you with their drinking and their fireworks?”

The Child made a soft warble, frowning and nodding. Sana tickles one exposed green toe. “Poor thing.”

Din doesn’t fall asleep easily that night. The Child lies on his chest, their breathing in tandem. A green claw wrapped securely around his index finger, and the Mandalorian doesn’t have the heart to let go.

* * *

“Nearly left without you!” Paz Vizla hammers his pauldron as Din runs, harried, towards him.

He’s late. The Child was fussing this morning over breakfast, not wanting to leave Din’s side. Until he dropped him off at his Armorer’s, managing a three-fingered wave in farewell before Din parts.

Sana smiles, relieved upon seeing him. “You’re with me,” she’s already kicking her leg over the parked bike, the large generator attached to the back. Her Commander, Se-Lenah is riding the other one, with two more generators attached, and a battery cell strapped to the seat.

“Unless you to go with him?” Sana offers.

Vizla’s powering up his own phoenix, hovers in the air beside the small party. Din looks warily at this, shakes his head. Not trusting his own skill level.

The village is still mostly asleep around them, recovering from the night before. The sun has been invisible all morning, has already breached the tree line by this time, but the cloud cover keeps it from filtering through. The day is grey and oppressive. If any were a more superstitious folk, they would take heed this warning.

Din finds he’s missing the almost blinding way the sun reflected off all the snow, bringing calm assurances, banishing every dark thought from his head. His sleep was sporadic, the quiet of the camp and the planet do nothing do his roving mind. He’s still embarrassed about his antics last night – his pitfall into darkness, the way Sana crawled in after him to pull him out of the excesses of his paranoid mind…

How in his moment of weakness he had caressed her, reached for her…

Din sighs, disgruntled, but goes to sit behind Sana, barely able to bring himself to make eye contact with her.

“Bike it is then.” She winks at him before placing her purple helmet over her head.

Then it’s the whirring of the speeders, and the group is off.

It’s a long ride to the neighboring town. The natives are spread out on Carlac. Their only company is the dense forest between each secluded hub. In the distance, the mountains barely move, their snow-capped peaks shrouded in heavy fog, rolling down the sides and settling over the treetops. It obscures the path ahead.

Without their helmet filters, he doubts he would barely make out the outline of Paz Vizla, flying beside them, skillfully dodging the trees. He almost wishes he _had_ taken his phoenix if only for the practice, because now he has to hold Sana’s waist, and that’s a different kind of torture.

Exquisitely so.

He wonders if in some way he is being punished. It’s an odd kind of karmic one, he’ll admit. To be in such close proximity to the one woman that feels so out of his depth, out of his range. He’s become quite adept at denying himself things over the years, but this feels like a titanic effort, tauntingly dangled before him – a prize worth more than he can bargain for. He chases that thought away – Sana is not a prize, nor a trophy. He respects her. He’s being too passive. The woman deserved better than his rather lame attempts to deny himself.

Din peers at the back of her head, at where his hands sit along her hips. As if knowing his eyes are on her, her helmet swivels, making her back arch slightly. And _gods_ , if Din were a weaker man…

“All good back there?” She calls to him over her shoulder.

He nods, but his hands tighten thoughtlessly on her waist. He has to spend the rest of the ride thinking of banking accounts and the current market of Guild rates to keep his betraying body in check.

* * *

Din watches the Ming Po people as they park the bikes.

They are curious bunch. Many stares intently follow the Mandalorians and their shiny armor as they make their way through the crowds. Sana had mentioned that this planet escaped the Galactic Wars relatively unscathed and it shows. They are calm, trusting. The fearful oppressive hand of the Empire is not present here, never has been. Gone is the all-too familiar slouch and dreary, wrinkled foreheads of those who lived under the Empire. The constant rigidness of vigilance. The Ming Po, and the humble, unassuming way in which they walk in their village square, the unburdened, almost innocent way in which they look to the strangers in their powerful armor, it all speaks to the humility and quiet dedication and tenacity that has become their way of life.

It’s not like Nevarro at all. Where every face he passed was so visibly entrenched in the lifestyle of complications, of divided loyalties. Of greed and lechery. None of that exists here.

Or so it seems.

An old man hobbles over to their group. He has many wrinkles, his stern face like worn leather, and an all-white beard sags to his waist. It’s his eyes that made Din notice him – black, beady, fermenting with hate. They’re focused on the woman in purple.

Din steps between the elder and Sana before he fully calculates what happens.

The old man spits. The wad falls flatly on Din’s unpainted armor, with an anticlimactic splat. He jerks his chin at the Mandalorians, scowling, mutters something like a curse beneath his breath in the native language, then turns sharply away, disappearing back into the crowd of the Ming Po village.

Beside him, the other Mandalorians witnessing this are tense. Se-Lenah’s hand is resting on her weapon; Paz’ fists are clenched at his sides. None speak. They look to Sana as to what to do next.

“He didn’t mean it.”

Din spins earnestly to the woman, speaking stoically behind him. He grinds his teeth, knowing that in any other situation the affront on her honor would not go unpunished.

But Sana’s expression is blank. “He’s just an ignorant old man.” She wipes the spittle off his armor with the bottom of her cloak.

They unpack the bikes in silence.

* * *

The Council of Elders of this village are grateful for the generators and batteries. They come over to Sana, bowing and smiling, ushering her into private conference. Their leader, a woman with silver hair and kind eyes steps forward to hug Sana tightly. The members of this Council are even older than the ones in their village, and they talk slower, with much more care. Sana’s very patient. She gives Din a fleeting small smile before ducking into the tearoom with them.

Din, Paz, and Se-Lenah walk around the village, but the mood of their group is disturbed.

Se-Lenah’s spending much too long looking woefully at the dark clouds that haven’t cleared overhead and making calculations and checking her HUD metrics for the barest change in temperature and atmosphere. She mentions something noncommittally to the two men about storms in the mountain pass that might delay their passage, but she’s distracted.

Paz is acting more like the loud, braggadocio of old, and it’s beginning to get under Din’s skin. He saunters through the town square, looking at the wares and goods for sale in the market stalls, making flippant conversations with the locals. At one point, he makes some snarky, insincere comment under his breath to the two Mandalorians about how the Ming Po didn’t deserve Sana’s generosity, which makes Se-Lenah snort loudly and storm off, leaving the company of the men. It made Paz sigh and grumble some more, kicking the snow with a show of impatience as the woman’s black armor disappeared in the crowd.

Din rolls his eyes. Paz is being annoying – perhaps he’d had too much tihaar the night before and is privately nursing a hangover.

“Nothing Djarin, I’m just bored!” Paz snarls when Din tries to delicately broach the subject. He hip-checks Din and stalks off, intending to follow Se-Lenah.

By the time Sana exits the tearoom in the company of the Council of Elders, it has started to snow. Din’s the only one waiting for her by the speeder bikes.

“Where are the others?” Sana asks him. He only shrugs.

He helps her load the large crates of medical supplies to their transports. The snowfall doesn’t bother Sana, but it’s making Din nervous. Se-Lenah’s calculations were correct – they might be delayed after all.

Just as he’s thinking of the woman, she emerges from the main part of the village, trotting over to them. Din can immediately read the stiff line of tension in her body.

“My lady,” she exclaims upon approaching her. "It’s Paz, come quick.”

* * *

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shereshoy - lust for life and much more. A uniquely Mandalorian word, meaning the enjoyment of each day and the determination to seek and grab every possible experience, as well as surviving to see the next day - hanging onto life and relishing it. An understandable state of mind/ emotion for a warrior people. Closely related to the words for live, hunt and stay safe. (from Mandoa.org)  
> mesh’la - beautiful


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a bit of a rollercoaster - angst, fluff, FEEEELLSSSS, plot. oh, and smut...?

They can hear a booming voice as they approach a small crowd on one end of the market. At the center of it, they can see Paz’ blue helm towering over the natives. Beside him, stands a middle-aged Ming Po with greying goatee, and a dark cloak. He is pointing an accusing finger at the taller, armored man, who, Din registers, is holding himself back with an enormous amount of restraint.

“ –their weapons, here. Just like in the stories of old. Because they are not human – they are monsters.”

There’s an audible gasp that ripples through the Ming Po people at his pronouncements.

“Look! Here come more of the killers!” The Ming Po man is saying to those congregated. “Just like I told you.”

The Ming Po fall away as the three other Mandalorians approach, Sana at the head. “Please, we mean no harm.”

“Lies!” Din recognizes the old man from earlier, the one who spat on him. He’s standing behind the other one, his wizened face twisted with fury and directed at Sana. “She lies!”

The first one steps forward, his finger still raised in Paz’ direction, and on the black Mythosaur painted on his shoulder’s left pauldron. “That is the sigil of Death Watch. I am certain.”

Paz doesn’t move a muscle at the accusation. He’s more twice the size of the Ming Po man, and could easily bash the man’s head in.

“No!” Sana counters, pleading. “Not – we’re _not_.”

The mob around them slinks back, Din sees women clutching children, shared faces of shock and horror. Fear – the air is saturated with it. They move away from the ones in armor in stunned amazement.

“We come in peace.” Sana stands in front of Paz, placing herself between him and the two accusers. Her palms are raised, the lines of her face fraught with despair. “We trade for medical supplies, not weapons. We have families, too, children.”

“Aha, poison!” The Ming Po man shouts, nodding to the crowd. “This is how they do it – brainwashing children into becoming soldiers, to be marched with weapons against us. Raid our villages, pillage, and plunder. We’ll be burned alive in our homes just like those before us.”

“Never – we would never! We’re –”

The man with the goatee spins to the crowd, dark cloak swishing. “Death Watch has returned to Carlac!”

“No – it’s not –” But Sana’s words are drowned out by the collective gasps of horror. One woman in the crowd falls faint.

Din keeps his hand on his blaster at his side. There are too many innocents around and the tinder has been struck, waiting for a fallout. Beside him, Se-Lenah is keeping her eyes on his six, fingers twitching at her sides.

“Sana,” Din shouts to her, “let’s leave!”

Sana grips Paz’ arm, which is resting by his holstered blaster. “Don’t you dare draw your weapons,” she orders the Mandalorians. “Don’t you dare – Vizla!”

Finally, Paz moves at Sana’s command. He side-steps Sana, who is still clutching his weapon-arm and they slowly back away. The crowd moves for them, circling around, staying as far away as possible. The agitator spits at their feet.

“Murderers!”

“Keep walking.” Sana’s voice is low, jaw stiff. “Do not look back.”

“ _Murderers_!”

* * *

The Mandalorians are tense in the tearoom. The village on this side of the town is tranquil, picturesque in the falling snow. But Din grumbles, his stomach boiling as he looks at it for the cracks in the façade have appeared.

They’ve been silent since returning here. Sana is the first to break it; she’s holding her head in her hands, sitting on one bench in the far corner.

“This is my fault,” she says.

“What did you do, Vizla?” Din rounds on the larger man, shoving him against the cuirass, hard enough to get the larger man to stagger. “What did you _do_?”

“Nothing!” Paz retorts, knocking Din’s arms away. “The man approached me – next thing I know he’s calling me Death Wa–”

“If it was your hot-headedness that got us in this–”

"Enough!” It’s Se-Lenah’s harsh tone that fills the room. “Neither of you are helping!”

The two men separate, exiling themselves to isolated corners of the room. Paz crosses his arms over his broad chest, leans against the wall. Din’s nerves are frayed so he paces around the room.

“My lady,” Se-Lenah crouches before her, places a comforting hand on her knee. “If you wish to leave, we must do so now. This storm is only getting worse.”

“No, those supplies are too precious,” she rubs her face. “I don’t want to lose any.”

Se-Lenah hesitates, looks to the others. “Do you think they will come back? Stir up more trouble?”

Sana is the only one to shake her head. “They have no weapons. They cannot harm us.”

“But the things he said…”

Se-Lenah’s words hang in the air. No one says anything, but they are all thinking it. The vivid picture is painted, if the burnt-out buildings in their own village are not proof enough of Death Watch’s smear on their history, then it is the fear in the eyes of their neighbors.

“What if they all turn on us?”

“The Ming Po are not our enemies,” while her face is stern, there’s a slump in her shoulders, the dignified posture is missing. “I should have come here _alone_.” Sana’s restless sigh brings Din’s pacing to a halt. Her eyes land on him, heavy and sorrowful.

There’s a shuffling by the door and the nervous Mandalorians all whisk around sharply at the sound. It’s an old woman, one of the Council of Elders. She’s shaking the snow off her white hair, her cane dragging on the timber floors as she enters the tearoom.

“Ah, good still here.” Her voice is much too light-hearted for the fraught audience, and the group share confused and uncertain looks. “Your company has yet to eat, may I offer some tea?”

“Thank you, Jeni, but that is not necessary. My companions cannot remove their helmets in the presence of others.”

The Ming Po woman, Jeni, is already lighting the small stove where a kettle sits. “This snow will pass soon, and you will return to your village shortly, but meanwhile you shall eat something. We would be terrible hosts if we didn’t at least offer.”

She turns to assess those around her, taking in each Mandalorian in turn. Jeni does not regard them with fear or displeasure, but rather with an audacious amount of curiosity. She taps her cane against Paz’ leg armor, as if testing its durability. “This one is _very_ large. But what is this mood, I’m sensing?”

“There are those among you who would not have us on this planet,” Sana starts to explain.

Jeni nods along. “Yes, Death Watch. We have many stories of them. Our memories are long, my Mandalorian friends.”

She sets up the mugs, dispensing a small amount of tea leaves into each one, followed by a lump of sugar. “We have an old saying in our language – I’m roughly translating, of course – but it means ‘nothing is certain, not even the mountains.’ Of course, in our language it’s much more poetic. Galactic Basic can be so…inelegant.”

The sage shook her head with a small chuckle.

“There will always be those that dissent,” Jeni says when the kettle whistles and the tea is poured. “They fear what they do not know. But Mandalorians and Ming Po have more in common then what make up our differences. Come drink.”

* * *

Later, after the Mandalorians and the Ming Po greet each other, and sit for a long while together – eating and sharing tea. Din finds Sana move away from the crowds and head outside. Excusing himself, he follows her.

She’s not gone far, is just standing under the awning by the door, watching the snow fall. She appears deep in thought as he approaches her. He’s content to stand beside her, silently supporting her. Their pauldrons bump, and a soft smile appears on her lips, but it falls short of her eyes.

“I’m afraid I’ve mucked everything up,” she says.

Din crosses his hands at the wrist, holds them against his utility belt, relaxing beside her. “None of this is your fault,” he reminds her.

“All I wanted…” Sana begins, sighing and gazing at the falling snow, “was to build a better world for my daughter. One she would be _proud_ of. Have I failed before I’ve even begun? Does that make me selfish?”

“No!”

“I cannot escape from our past. Nor know how to convince them that we are not Death Watch. But to them, we’re as evil as the Empire…” She’s chewing thoughtfully on her lip. “Death Watch…Death – who calls themselves _Death_ Watch anyway?” She says with a sarcastic scoff. “Can’t have a name like that and not make a few enemies, I mean _honestly_.”

She tosses her head with a melodramatic eyeroll. He looks back towards the tearoom – where Se-Lenah and Paz are still being entertained by their hosts. Though the two Mandalorians are by far more a source of entertainment to the gathered Ming Po, the Council of Elders, and their families, who are beguiled by their armored companions. It’s a more promising sign.

“Look at them,” he tells her, directing her attention to the interior of the tearoom. “They are not all afraid of us.”

Sana’s puckered brow tells him she’s still focusing on the negative.

“You know,” he tells her, “I was raised by Death Watch.”

Her eyes widen, she shifts her stance to look at him better. “I didn’t know that,” she says under her breath.

He remembers with a certain fondness his _buir_ , the one who saved him from the Separatist attack that ravished his home world. They were gentle, caring people. A vastly different portrait from the one presented to him. For now, knowing that they might also be responsible for the unspeakable horrors that the Ming Po suffered, draws a shadow of doubt over Din’s relationship to that past.

“History is never all good or all bad,” he says. Sana makes a hum of acknowledgment. “You can still build a better world,” he adds.

“Here _we_ are, you and I, raised on opposite sides,” she laughs dryly. “You by Death Watch, and myself among pacifists…and we’re friends.”

Din’s mouth hangs open. He dramatically tilts his head, like he’s throwing her a comically disbelieving look. “Are we?”

“I should think so!” She rejoins robustly with an amicable jab to his midriff. It lifts her dampening mood.

“It’s not for nothing,” Din strikes up, looking at his snow-scuffed boots, suddenly shy. “There are those of us here who are proud of you. The clans who’ve followed you here, the Armorer, Se-Lenah, Paz…”

A few moments pass, and Din’s hoping he hasn’t crossed some kind of invisible boundary, because her face is unreadable, looking at him like he might be a stranger. “And you?” she prods.

They’re close enough that Din can feel the entire side of her body against his – a line of heat from shoulder to hip to knee. His heart flutters in his ribcage, and it’s become ridiculously hot under the helmet as Sana beholds him.

“I…I am.” It sounds watery to his ears. If today has been an opportunity for anything, it’s now or never for Din to make his intentions known. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

Her gaze is as resolute as her words; she understands. “But I’m not alone.”

“You know I’ll always support you.”

“I don’t need protection…”

“That’s not what I –”

Then, gasping, she stiffens. “The snow! It’s finally stopped!”

Indeed, it had. It means they can return on the speeders, head back to their own village. Sana means to call the others over, and for some reason, Din is disappointed.

He’s afraid to give his own desires a name. The burning under his skin. For too long he’s never known what to do with it. It’s amorphous, this hidden yearning within him. Only that when he thinks on it long enough, it begins to take the very shape of Sana.

He reaches for her wrist. It stops her in her tracks, and she’s staring at where his hand is resting on the exposed line of skin between her gauntlet and the dark material of her glove. With a rash movement, he crowds against her, cradling the back of her neck and gently butting their heads together.

Her breath snags and her hands clutch at his sides, melting into the _kov'nynir_. The kiss of metal must be cold against her face, but she doesn’t shy away, rather pulls them closer. Malleable, they meld, until their beskar is flush against each other.

“Din,” she breathes, and it fogs up his visor. The mechanization in his helmet whirs to correct it.

“We can weather this. I’m not going anywhere,” he whispers, like it’s their little secret.

Smiling broadly, she closes her eyes. “I wouldn’t let you,” she says. “I would have sabotaged your ship. _Forbid_ you from leaving.”

His whole chest rumbles with a chuckle – bright and warm. It banishes any lingering doubt. They’re a unit, he feels it, perfect in each other’s embrace, made stronger _together_. An unbreakable alloy.

* * *

It’s less an awkward goodbye than initially thought. Jeni, their Ming Po host, and Sana speak for a long moment before they leave, no doubt discussing further arrangements. True to Din’s assessment, there are some here that are not afraid of a relationship with their Mandalorian neighbors. But the future is still uncertain.

Sana’s expression is steely through the interview, but it must have some positive outcome, because she manages a smile, even under the heavily furrowed brow to her Mandalorian compatriots before setting her helmet over her head.

The ride back is uneventful. The storm has stopped, but the sky is still dark, and the day is grey. It’s early evening by the time they arrive back, and Din is relieved that there was no more trouble. But he still holds Sana’s waist tighter all the same, and she doesn’t seem to mind.

The Armorer is the first to greet them back in the main village square. Din’s Foundling is in her arms. He squirms, wanting to be released and comes waddling over to greet the bikes, holding out his arms for Din to pick him up, which he does graciously, to delighted ear-piercing squeals on the Child’s part. He taps his helm against the little one’s brow, and his hands tap on the side of the beskar in happy acknowledgement, chatting away at a parsec a minute.

“Looks like somebody missed you,” Sana says fondly from the bike, peeling her helmet off and watching the father-child bond with an amused smile.

The Armorer comes over, asking how the trade went. Din and Sana exchange an aggravated look.

“What happened?” The Armorer says tightly.

But Sana’s waving her hand. “You mean beyond the usual harassment? Nothing.”

“They didn’t try to remove your helmets, did they?”

“Nothing like that,” Sana says, indicating to the Armorer they will talk later. “What of here?”

“There is something,” the older woman adds, with a hint of anticipation. “We received a message from Clan Wren.”

Sana nearly drops her helmet into the snow. “Clan Wren! We – we must tell Paz.” She looks hurriedly over to where he’s helping Se-Lenah unload the crates of medical supplies, then back to the gold helmet. “We thought them all dead! Where are they?”

The Armorer shakes her head. “She wouldn’t say. I believe she’s in hiding.”

“Clan Wren was in possession of the Artifact some years ago before it was returned to Clan Kryze. She might have information on how it ended up in Imperial hands.” Sana’s mood turns both excited and apprehensive.

“This might interest you too, Djarin,” the Armorer says to him. “The last known associations of Clan Wren were with a jetii.”

In his arms, the Child’s ears flick upwards with childish interest. Din looks between the Child and the two women. “A jetii – I thought they were our enemy?”

Sana rubs her chin, thoughtfully. “Yes, I seem to remember hearing something about that…this was many years ago. Clan Wren also closely collaborated with the Imperial Governors in the Mandalorian system for a time. That was before reunification – would be before Night of a Thousand Tears. What is it this member of Clan Wren wants? Are they coming to Carlac?”

“I am wary of sharing any location with them until we have confirmation.”

Sana nods. “Quite right. Paz should be able to confirm. Clan Wren is under House Vizla.”

The Armorer excuses herself, moves off to join the others.

Sana is staring off into space, hands on her hips. There’s a current of nervous energy about her, for one of her boots taps a frantic beat into the snow. She turns alarmingly to Din, as if she just realized he’d been staring at her.

“This jetii,” Din says slowly, looking down at the Child cradled in his arms. “Do you think they would know what species this Child is, about his powers – could they help us?”

Sana fawns over the Child, tucks the robes around his face, glides a delicate thumb across the plane of his cheek. “I don’t know,” she says, a touch forlorn. Then, like she suddenly remembered something: “If you want, I could let you look through our archives, give you any information on the jetii. There might be something there.”

“I’d like that,” he says, stepping closer.

“I could help you?” One of her eyebrows raise in a suggestive manner.

Din gives her a pointed look through the visor. “You have enough to do,” he tells her sternly.

Sana’s eyes narrow, too playful to be of any real threat though. “All right, you’ve caught me.” She puts her hands up in mock surrender, takes a few paces backwards. “I acquiesce. I’m just looking for an excuse to spend more time with you.”

Butterflies swarm in Din’s stomach, as she winks and spins on her heel, heading over to oversee the supplies unload. The Child giggles, far too knowingly, and Din is startled as if out of a reverie. He looks sardonically down at the Child. “Oh, don’t _you_ start,” he says.

* * *

The days pass much as they did before. Din drops the Child off in the mornings with the other younglings for the day. His mornings are free, so he helps the builders in their new construction – now making more permanent dwellings for the largest clans. Or, he goes for a walk with the Child strapped to his chest while running errands in the village center. By the afternoons, he’s either in a sparring drill or Phoenix practice with Paz.

Evenings are reserved for research with the archives. Sana has offered him data chips of information that need scouring for information on jetii. The archive is biased – most only mention the large history of the jetii and Mandalorian feuds, and their thousand-year iterations. The jetii are feared by their apparent control over the more mystical elements of nature – healing, moving large objects with their minds, the like – all of which Din is somewhat familiar with given what he’s seen the Child do so far. But the sources are murky, patchy; some of the data is corrupted and unreadable. When the wars struck, the librarians who wished to salvage what they could hastily compiled all the data, most of which was already on its way to being erased or suppressed thanks to Imperial rule on Mandalore and over the Imperial Academy. Especially concerning the mysterious jetii – almost all that data has been largely erased by Imperial censors. It’s endlessly frustrating.

One evening, hitting yet another roadblock in his research, he sighs heavily rubbing his eyes in a gesture of mute defeat and weariness.

It’s getting late. The Child has long since been put to down in his own bed.

Din’s focus on the data pad in his lap is going in and out, so he shuts it off, tosses it at his feet. He’s removed the heavier pieces of his armor, discarded his weapons array, even his cape and boots, so he could sit more comfortably among the pillows and rugs. Relaxed and tired, he lets his mind wander.

Since sharing their first kov’nynir all of a few days ago, they’ve only touched once more. For just yesterday, Sana, trapping him before his training session with Paz, hastily brushed her forehead against his, dusting her cheek over the plating on his helmet. It was all over before Din had a moment to process it. Looking around him then, just outside the Mess Hall, not a soul was paying attention, but it still caught him off guard enough for the next few hours.

Din did seem rather unsteady with his flying that afternoon, with a new bruise on each knee to prove it. Even Paz thought he was acting like a distracted dolt while they tried to fly together.

While she offered to help him, her own duties as the Tribe’s – ostensibly, though unofficially crowned – Alor are exhaustive, and she has been unable to assist him. In fact, they’ve seen less and less of each other and he finds he misses her companionship. He does not want to fall back on his promise of continuing to support her, but so far all he is able to do is silently, from the shadows.

Din is startled by a noise. He’s lying flat on his back on the floor; the data pad is still by his feet. The warming lamp in the center of the room throws strange shadows on the fabric of the tent walls. He sits up, ears straining for the sound to come again.

The wind whistles outside his tent. Dark, for not even the moon can be seen.

By some cruel happenstance, or the very least, the murky yearnings of his mind, he’s got a very prominent erection. That, and there’s someone outside his tent. He hears his name, mistakes it for the wind.

He’s placing his helmet on, takes a few calming breaths, as he scuttles up and out into the night.

“Can’t sleep?” he asks the silhouette. She does not wear her armor, just a long white cape.

She falters, seeing him out of his armor. “I…I thought you were still awake, I’m sorry.”

But she will always have a place near him, so he shakes it off, says, “Come inside.”

She follows him into his tent but hesitates by the flap closures. Then, at his insistence, she’s bending down, removing her boots and cape, and comes to sit beside him in the center of the room by the warmth of the light. The Child makes a small noise in his sleep but does not move, so Din pulls the curtain separating the sleeping pallet from the rest of the yurt.

“I think I have some leftover tihaar somewhere,” he offers.

Sana holds in a laugh, face brimming with mischief. Din finds this side of her entirely alluring. She’s dressed in her usual casual wear consisting of a lightweight tunic and form fitting breeches. Her braid is undone, and her feathery hair falls around her shoulders. Din keeps gazing at the way the soft light hits the long tresses to make them shine.

“You are trouble,” she teases. “Have some with me?”

When he retrieves the tihaar for her, she pulls the cork out of the bottleneck with her teeth and launches it across the room, takes a hasty sip and passes it to him. Making a show of it, she closes her eyes, even turns her whole body away. He still hesitates, but Creed secure, he yields, surprised at his leap into trusting her implicitly.

He removes the helmet, keeping it by his knee. It’s both a relief and a danger. His pulse spikes because she’s so close. He takes the bottle, puts it to his lips. He shall never get used to how bitterly the drink slides down his throat, but it makes him languid, warm, and serene.

She wraps her arms around her knees, rocks back and forth a bit. “I would have come sooner. Are you getting anywhere in your research?”

They talk for a bit about that. Din fills her in on what he’s found so far. The topic shifts to Sana’s busy days, how she’s been locked in meetings on negotiations or supplies.

“I’ve missed you,” she says after a while. She hasn’t turned around; they keep passing the bottle between them.

“It’s only been a few days. Silly, is it? But I like talking to you. You have a nice voice, and you’re a good listener. Sometimes, I feel like the others only say what I want to hear – not you. You don’t…” she blows air out of her mouth, gives a self-deprecating scoff. “You never judge. You cared before it every meant anything, before it came with a name, and a title. When it didn’t matter. When I was just an archivist. And you were, you were a bounty hunter. And…”

A chasm appears between them as she breaks off, disappearing into the memory of then. Din feels the same. It felt simpler somehow. Before everything became infinitely more complicated.

“I remember,” he says, bravely crossing the abyss between them. He scoots closer, pulling her body against his, so her back is flush against his chest and she’s cradled between his knees. Barefaced, he leans into her hair until it tickles his nose and takes a deep breath, inhaling her scent.

Blindly she reaches for him. He takes hold of her probing hands, and she grasps them warmly, interlacing their fingers in her lap. They’re benevolently gentle; she handles his rough, calloused hands with kindness.

“Se-Lenah leaves tomorrow,” she tells him. “I’m sending her on a special mission.”

He doesn’t say anything, letting her speak.

“When that man spit on you the other day, I-I realized something…” She goes tense in his arms, fidgets with his hands.

“What’s that?” His words moves the hair by her ear. Sana shivers in his arms and her breath hitches.

“First, gimme more tihaar,” she laughs. He places the bottle in her hand, and she takes a sip, coughing a bit on the strong drink. When the liquid settles in her belly, warming her, Sana sighs. “I realized I can’t protect her from everything.”

She’s talking about Anya.

“It was arrogant of me to think that I could at all,” she confesses. “Like what Jeni said: that those who act in fear do so because they do not know any better. But I realized, I realized…”

Sana’s grip is painful, she’s squeezing his hands so forcefully. Then, as if noticing that, she relaxes, almost apologetically. “I realized, that I was doing just that. That I was letting my fear dictate my actions. And...I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”

She’s breathless, chewing on her lip. “Do you trust me?” she asks.

“Yes,” it seems to come from the deepest well of his soul, bursting to get out, accompanied by a river of feelings.

Cautiously, the woman before him begins to move. Her eyes are firmly shut, but she twists to face him completely, holding his arms to steady herself because, he can see, she’s trembling. Her hands begin to climb up his arm, travel to his neck. At the first brush of her fingers on his chin, they both jump, startled. Her hands start to pull away, aware that’s it’s too much. Too soon. But Din grants her permission, he reaches to encircle her wrists.

Tenderly, he bends his head, leans forward until the pads of her fingers find the roughhewn hairs on his jaw; she jumps, like a startled animal, skids across his skin, her touch nervous, tentative, unsure. He tries to keep himself very still, though his heart is galloping in his chest, thudding almost to the point of discomfort.

She’s handling him like glass, like a precious object, caressing his warm cheeks. Din’s dizzy with the sensation. He’s never had anyone touch his face, not since he was a child –

Her hand glides along the sharp lines his nose, finding the scar along the bridge, the many hills and valleys along the brow of his sloping forehead. Brushing against the hair falling by his ears delights her, and she grabs handfuls of it, making his breath shatter in his ribcage. His hands fall to his thighs, gripping stiffly as if to anchor himself, to stop the feeling of coming apart at the seams. He’s unsure if this is allowed, if he’s broached some sacred rule, but then, when she feels his ears, the underside of his jaw – he finds that he doesn’t particularly care anymore.

His eyes fall shut, half in dizzying pleasure, half in somnolent tranquility. For all Din can think about is how _soft_ Sana feels. Thumbs stroke up to his mouth, tracing its contours, noting the bristles of his moustache, at the dry surface of his lips – there she idles for a while.

“That’s why, when Se-Lenah leaves tomorrow, she’ll return with my daughter. It’s time for her to come home,” Sana says.

Din’s lips, tingling with the sensation of her touch, curve into a broad smile. Her fingers find the dint in his cheek of a dimple. Din nearly groans out loud at the loss of her hands. “You should put that back on now,” she says.

“Okay,” he says when it’s securely in place.

Her eyes blink open. The hazel color appear greener in this light, and they never leave his visor, not even when she presses onto his shoulders and guides him to lay down together on the rug. A second wave of energy washes over him; Din immediately forgets he’s tired and sore. His body is thrumming. The linen shirt bunches in his hands as he wraps them around her waist. 

“Is this all right?” She assents to it, and he notices she’s shivering again. “Are you cold?”

“Hardly,” her shaky exhale fogs his visor. Then he’s burning up, because she’s rolling her hips to rub against his front and no doubt, she’s noticed that _other_ parts of his body are definitely awake right now.

“Would you –” she starts, “would you like to meet her? Anya.”

“Yes,” he chuckles.

That makes her smile, so sweetly, Din only wishes he could see it unmediated. Wishes to press his lips there too, as inviting as a cool drink. He wonders if she has the same desires, and she must, because her eyes are searching the visor, as if mapping out the contours of his face underneath it. Matching what her fingers touched to the invisible face behind the mask.

She slides a warm palm up the front of his shirt to touch his flank and all the blood zooms out of his brain.

“Do you want this?”

“Yes,” he says, breath hitching.

“Me too,” she answers. “Been waiting for _ages.”_

His throat closes at that, cuts off his next gulp for air, and the heat in his entire being flares. “Sana,” he bites down on a moan because she’s pressing into him, affixing her thigh between his legs, and rubbing at his tented crotch.

“Shush,” she says. “No more talking.”

She’s pressing at his shoulders, until he’s flat on his back and she’s hovering over him, pulling loose his fastenings. It’s just an easy tug at the lacings on his breeches, then his straining cock is exposed in the night air of the tent. She must have licked her own palm because her hand begins to slide easily up and down. Din’s digging his fingers into her thighs on his hips, flexing upwards into the wet, warmth of her hand.

Fuck, it’s been awhile. Not since – not since…her.

He mewls when she changes pace, speeds up for a few strokes, then slows back down.

“Finally,” she murmurs, “oh, I’ve been _dreaming_ of touching you.”

A strange sound like a strangled squeak escapes his vocoder. He’s absolutely rigid underneath her, pulsing and hot, sticky with precum. “Like that,” he manages to say, hips in tandem with her hands.

He moans out loud when something licks at his tip. She’s…she’s taking him in her mouth! His head snaps up to watch. Sliding her mouth down his length until she’s swallowing around his entire girth. Din bucks, feels the tip hit the back of her throat, and she makes a gag, He gropes to peel her by the back of her head off his cock.

“Is this – is… what – you…”

“Changed your mind?” She asks, and she’s pouting. A sheen of precum on her lips.

“ _No_ ,” he growls. “Keep going.” _Yesyesyesyes –_

And she’s already dropping her face back to take him in slower this time. He tries to stifle his own sounds, lucid enough to remember there is a sleeping Foundling on the other side of the curtain by the bed. Under the helm, his mouth falls open with a load groan at the sensation, and the Maker above, the sight of her smart mouth wrapped around him. He’s careful not to buck too much, keeps his hips very stationary. But she does this wicked little swirling motion, and his arms give out, he falls back to his elbows.

The sweet tension of his orgasm is already building. His pent-up frustration, the long lingering glances between them, the unspoken line of tension, the memory of their last coupling, the too brief touches, the _proof_ of their breeding…

Cradling his balls in one hand, she reaches up the other to hike his shirt higher up his torso. The muscles in his abdomen flutter, and her palm is warm on the sharp jut of his hip bone.

Sana takes him deep again, hollowing her cheeks and sliding her lips along the veiny surface of his cock. At the bottom, she chances a peek up at him, eyes hungry, she hums, enjoying the taste of him, and it’s all over for Din.

With another sinful slide of her tongue, Din throws his head back and comes into the furnace of her mouth.

She licks him clean, swallowing every last drop. Tucking him back into his pants and wiping her mouth. There’s a twist to her smirk that’s dangerous, absolutely lewd. Her pupils are blown, black and heated.

“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to taste you,” she says, crawling up his body, looking very smug.

He tucks a thick strand of hair behind her ears, cradles her head against his forehelm. “That was – that was,” but he has to catch his breath.

“Enjoyable? Wonderful? Sexy?” She prompts with a funny smile, trying for helpful.

“Incredible,” he says, somewhere between laughing and groaning. “That was incredible.”

He parts her lips with his thumb, drags finely over the swollen spit-licked pink.

“I’m not done with you yet, Din.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> buir - parent/ father/mother  
> kov'nynir - headbutt, also a Keldabe kiss (Mandalorian smooching)  
> jetii - Jedi


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOFTDADDY DIN hours are back! Did ya'll see that trailer for S2? geeezz so excited for baby and mando to be back on soon.  
> Chapter warnings: Mentions of nightmares, cuddling, story time, so if you're soft for hurt/comfort this is it....followed by loads of smut smut smut (including: vaginal fingering, making out, cockwarming, dirty talk, oral sex f receiving). Just some gentle, or not so gentle (??) love making between consenting adults.  
> you're welcome.
> 
> Happy to be back! :)

When he wakes up in darkness he’s disoriented. There’s something prickling down the back of his neck and he shivers as a bead of sweat dips down on his neck. It takes him a second, blinking rapidly in the darkness that something warm is pressing all down his side; he shifts away from it, unconsciously, before he realizes, as he hears a sleepy, soft sigh, that it’s Sana. She makes another snore.

They’d fallen asleep on his sleeping pallet next to her. He hadn’t meant to. How long had they been lying there? He can’t check the chronometer because that would require him to move and he’s aware that Sana is pressed all along one side and curled, contentedly, by his neck is the Child.

“Sana,” he whispers. She doesn’t stir. “Sana,” he shakes one shoulder.

“Hmm?” comes the sleep-adled reply.

“Move over.”

Instead, she shuffles closer, her arm draping over him.

“No, other way.”

The woman starts speaking but he can barely make out the words. She lectures, even in her sleep. He sighs, a smile curving onto his face. He’s able to adjust halfway, but his left arm is tucked tightly into Sana’s side.

It’s pitch black in the tent. The warming lamp has gone off, set to a timer. He’s still wearing his helmet, but – knowing how dangerous the line he crosses is – he reaches up and pulls it over his head, letting it to the side, careful not to disturb either.

The air is mingled with the scent of the woman next to him, and it’s immediately comforting. He turns his head until his chin bumps her forehead, and the feeling of her skin, cool, soothing, touching his bare face makes his heart jump into his throat. Rolling onto his shoulder, he enjoys the way her scent washes over him. There’s something vaguely like her soap there, refreshing sweet fig with a soft hue of spice, like cardamom, and then a third one, musky, lingering. It arouses him and his nose presses right onto her neck.

Sana makes a honeyed hum in the back of her throat, sleepily, and his shirt rucks in her hand as she tightens around him. He’s instantly flooded with the heated memories of their night’s pleasure.

* * *

“I’m not done with you yet, Din.”

She pulls at the fabric by his neck and clamps her wet mouth onto his skin, feverish, pulse jumping under her lips as she sucks a bruise. He’s arching under her, his cock already taking interest again, even after the heady orgasm from just her mouth and hands, feeling needy and aching with want. Her hips are grinding roughly against his pelvis and he grabs her butt, the curve of one thigh, guiding her closer.

“Want…you,” he sighs, wishing to take and take and take until she has nothing else to offer.

“Do it then,” she chides with a low chuckle, and it’s right by his ear.

Gripping her body, he rapidly rolls them over. The breath steals right out of her lungs and she’s gaping, wide-eyed and very aroused underneath him. Sana’s knees part solidly around his hips and he presses into her, now taking his moment in control to grind his half-hard erection against her parted legs. He can smell their mingling breaths laced with tihaar, the brackish smell of the arousal she swallowed. He wants to rid himself of his barriers, shuck the last remnants of his armor and reveal himself, whole, unguarded, naked to her eyes.

With a blissful expression, her hand dives between them and rubs, directly, onto his growing arousal, and he’s a simpering mess, consumed by his body’s betrayal. The outright conquest of his brain and all sense.

“I…I won’t be gentle,” he says, and he’s surprised at how much like a growl it sounds. “I w-won’t be able to…”

Sana’s eyes flash in the yellow lights, her grin is too feral to be coy. “Yes,” and it’s barely more than a hiss, her tongue parting her lips to wet them, falling open with a breathy moan. “ _Yes_.”

He sits up, tugging at the stretchy material of her breeches. Sana aids him, discarding with ease the fabric that gets caught around her ankles. Din pauses, admiring the view, and Sana can barely meet his eyes as his hands travel up her strong legs to her hips, seeking permission to reveal more.

“It’s…” she stumbles, suddenly shy, stopping his zeal as he tries to lift the shirt off her torso. “It’s a different body.”

His movements stutter as he tries to decipher her meaning. She’s modest before him, the coloring on her freckled face, not just from her aroused state – he pauses. The pregnancy. She means it has transformed her, physically. He can’t imagine why her thoughts are such – all his own have been consumed with her beauty. How could such a noble woman debase herself with such trivial insecurities?

Din grates out an exasperated “ _I don’t care_ ,” and pulls her hips roughly against his own to grind his flagrant arousal into her open legs.

He spreads her thighs, admiring the view of her opening her body, a supplicant to his ministrations, to his eager veneration. There’s an obvious circle of wetness right at her core, spotting her panties. Din pets her, brushing his knuckles against her clothed sex. Sana stifles her moan with the back of her hand, and Din is reminded to be quiet himself, but he can’t help himself as he groans.

She’s a goddess before him, a divine creature of womanly nature.

He's about to rip the flimsy undershorts off her body when a soft wail breaks through his lust-clouded brain. They freeze, panting heavily in the tense air.

The wail comes again, followed by a distinctly childish snuffle and then, all of Din’s brain power switches modes entirely. He’s launching himself, swearing under his breath, off Sana, who’s now also looking concerned, and swiftly crosses the room in a few quick strides to part the curtain.

The Child is tossing and turning, consumed by a nightmare.

Heart shattering, Din cradles the little one. “Hey, hey, hey,” he says, voice still rough.

All of Din’s arousal fades, overridden by the very real anxiety of seeing his Foundling in such a state. The woeful sounds of the little one’s struggling continue, and Din rocks the bundle in his arms, muttering soothing words under his breath.

Sana comes to sit by him, one hand on his knee, gazing down at the Child with maternal care. Petting his forehead, she asks Din: “Does this happen often?”

“Not that often.”

His eyes do not open and he’s whimpering in his sleep, and no amount of Din’s gentle caresses seem to help. The Child does not wake.

“I don’t know what to do,” Din laments. “I wish there was a way I knew how to – to speak to him. To know what’s going on. If I could help – I…”

Sana’s rubbing smooth circles on his knee, nodding along with sympathy. “You’re doing the best you can. The Child loves you.”

“And I love him, but…” Din’s choking up, and abruptly stops talking. It’s the first time he’s shared such a sentiment and it seizes up in his chest, tightens around his lungs.

Sana only nods, encouragingly. Her smile soft and a touch forlorn. The Child shivers in his arms and makes a weak sound.

“Try speaking to him,” she advises.

Din scoffs, humorlessly. “And what do I say?”

“Anything. He’ll hear you,” she urges. “He’ll hear you.”

They lie back on the bed together, the Child nestled on Din’s chest, still caught in the throes of a nightmare with Sana stretched out alongside him, entangling her bare legs into his. And so, Din starts talking.

He feels like a fool. Not much of a talker himself. His mind goes blank at first, grasping at straws in a vain attempt to find something worthwhile to talk about.

“I…I’ve never seen snow, you know” he starts, lamely, huffing sheepishly. Sana hums from beside him. He continues. “I mean I never grew up with it. We didn’t have such volatile weather. My home planet – we had a rainy season and a dry season. My mother used to plant seeds in our backyard, in her garden. She had these flowers that—” Din closes his eyes. The buds stand out perfectly in his mind.

“They were yellow, they grew taller than me when I was a boy. And vegetables! My mother grew those too.” On his chest, the Child’s squirming stopped, and his panicked gasps turn to dulcet sighs.

Din continues, naming the other things his mother used to grow, remembering how he helped her dig out weeds, or repot the plants as they grew larger. He remembers finding earthworms in the soil and holding them up, watching them wriggle across his palm, tickling his skin. He remembers after one particularly rainy storm he found tons of them scattered across the garden, their bodies dancing on the wet soil.

It all comes spilling out, and he drones on and on: how his mother explained the names of each plant – this one for luck, that one for purity, this one for lovers – and he had stuck his tongue out, and his mother had laughed her pretty laugh; how he helped his mother pick the vegetables when they were ripe and chopped and diced them, spiced, and put into stews, and cooked into elaborate dinners with his father; how the warm meals they shared around the too-small table in their modest kitchen; the soft smile when his father returned from the market one busy day holding a packet of seeds for his mother, and he didn’t understand the significance of it when she had burst into tears. _Don’t cry mommy, he had said, don’t be sad. I’m not sad, his mother had said, smiling. I’m happy._

Something wet falls down his cheek and Din stops talking, the memory welling in his chest. The little one in his arms is sound asleep – no longer plagued by nightmares. His ears twitching in slumber, his snores pleasant. Next to him, pillowed on his left shoulder, Sana is also sound asleep, tucked perfectly against his side, one hand on the Child’s back.

* * *

When he arrives at the Razor Crest in the morning there was a message from Greef Karga on his comms system waiting for him with a usual check-in, at one point Cara Dune’s floating head appeared behind Greef’s back and she chimes in with a greeting of her own to him and the kid. In his lap, the kid trills at seeing the familiar faces of his friends and waves excitedly at the holo-message.

“Something else,” Greef starts, turning somber. “There’ve been whispers. Remember the TIE you brought down in the lava fields? Well it’s been turned into scrap pretty quickly by the Jawas, rumor has it they found the ship empty. No body. Which means—”

The older man’s face tightens. “I don’t want you to worry, Mando. I only hope you two are staying safe. I just want to inform you, but the Moff might still be out there. Stay safe Mando.”

It turns off with a whiff of static. The kid cranes his neck to look up at his father, making an inquiring chirp. Din bounces him on his knees. “Just as I feared,” he sighs.

So, distracting himself, Din goes about doing mindless repair maintenance on his ship. One of the solar panels on the roof failed in the last snowstorm and so Din’s doing his best to coax the wiring back to life.

The Child holds up a wrench.

“Not that one,” Din chides, “the other one.”

The kid quirks his head, looks at the pile of tools at his feet. “Ah,” he drums, and waddles over to the one Din’s pointing to.

“The spanner,” he says.

The Child reaches for it and offers it. “Ah?”

Din takes it, patting the kid’s wrinkled head while he coos. Spanner in hand, he finds the complication of the workflow distracting him from having to confront the idea that Moff Gideon is lurking somewhere in the galaxy, waiting to strike. He’d have to inform his Armorer of this news, and Sana.

Not long after he begins his task, he hears the roar of engines overhead, and checking out the ramp he catches the Mandalorian-built transport class ship fly overhead. It’s Se-Lenah’s ship. With dawning realization, Din remembers Sana’s sent her on a special mission. The next time he sees that ship over the skies of Carlac, it will be carrying his and Sana’s child.

By the time the Carlac sun is halfway across the sky, Din hears the thud of boots coming up the open ramp. It’s an unusually warm day on the snowy planet, melting some of the snow, enough that green peaks of grass are starting to show through.

The Child, banging the wrench dully on the floors of the hull, pauses and greets the visitor warmly with a raspberry blown through his lips.

There’s a musical sounding laugh in response. “Afternoon to you too. Whatchu got there? Helping your dad fix his ship?”

Din’s stomach does a little flip hearing the voice of Sana crooning at the Child. She was asleep when he and the Child took off earlier that morning, and not wanting to wake her – part of him pleased at seeing her so comfortably curled, face snuggled into his pillow, the golden light of morning playing with the color of her thick hair, fanning behind her like a halo – they crept out of the tent for the day.

The Mandalorian turns from his work, shutting the spanner off just in time to see Sana crouching to tickle the Child’s toes. Grinning ear-to-ear, she meets his eyes. She’s carrying a bag.

“Hey there!” She calls.

“Hi.”

“You didn’t wake me,” she reproaches.

“I wanted to let you sleep.”

There’s an alluring glint to her expression. “You _should_ have woken me. I almost missed Se-Lenah’s departure!”

Din’s insides bubble and turn upside down.

“How handy are you with a spanner?”

“Awful. I haven’t an engineering bone in my body.” She unslings the bag from her shoulder, drops it by the Child, who investigates its contents. “I did bring lunch though.”

* * *

After lunch she escorts him and the Child back to town. The Child demands that Sana carry him back the whole way, and Din offers her the sling. Sana is in her element mothering the Child, cooing and singing to him, entertaining his baby-talk, acting as if she can translate the nonsense that comes out of his mouth turning them into one-sided intellectual debates for fun.

Din’s heart is light. There isn’t any place in the galaxy he’d rather be in than right here, by this woman’s side.

“Hm, quite right,” she’s telling the Child, who’s longwinded argument has died down. “You make a compelling case for why we should add more frogs into our diet. I argue on two points with you, which are: that you be sympathetic to our rather limited culinary supplies and, secondly as such, prejudiced taste buds.”

The baby hums, lowly in his throat, as if he’s in on the joke and agrees with her thoughtful critique. Din only mutely shakes his head. They pass a copse of trees and the tiered roof tops of the town come into view. The Child suddenly squirms in the sling on Sana’s chest and he points with one finger raised in the direction of a large tree nearby, with a loud, abrupt trill.

“What’s that?” Sana asks him.

He only continues pointing towards the tree. It’s clearly the oldest one in the vicinity, nearly as tall as a building, it’s white bark aged and craggy. The red leaves are magnificent, twinkling in the afternoon sun, dripping heavy droplets of melting snow. The Child’s trills get louder as they approach.

“Ah,” he points, and Din sees it.

It’s almost invisible to the naked eye, but there on the edge of one branch close overhead, is the sign of nascent flower. It’s not fully formed, no more than a bulb with just the barest hint of petals coming forth.

“Strange,” Sana remarks. “I didn’t know these trees flowered.”

The Child whines, like he wants to get out, and Sana unbuckles him from the sling, lifting him up to inspect the strange flora. With a gentle finger, he touches the bulb, instantly it comes to life, blooming forth white petals with an inky blue center.

Giggling, he gingerly plucks it from the branch, and hands it to Sana. It’s intensely aromatic, and Sana buries her nose in it, gushing at the babe for his funny use of magic tricks and thanking him.

“Giving me gifts, huh?” Sana prods the Child, now comfortably back in the sling, a toothy grin decorating his impish face. “Or is this a bribe?”

“He likes you,” Din supplies.

Sana sticks the strange icy-blue and white Carlac tree flower behind her ear and laughs at him. He forgets all about his message from Greef and smiles the whole way back to camp.

* * *

“Let me see you.”

Sana looks across the tent at him.

It’s late evening. Dinner has finished hours ago; Din sent the Child to have a sleepover with some friends from the nursery. They’re alone. Finally.

“Let me see you,” he repeats.

Shivering, Sana steps forward draws the tie of her white cape, pulling it off her shoulders. Her linen shirt is nearly transparent, the barest outline of her nipples peak through, barefoot, she steps forward, closer to the light.

The stretchy material of her pants hug her legs, her wide hips, highlighting the muscles in her thighs and strong calves. Sana’s self-conscious, for she’s holding herself shyly under his scrutiny.

“Undress,” he orders.

She does so without a word, bending to strip the offending article off her body. The long tails of her shirt barely cover her backside. Goosebumps rise on her newly exposed flesh and she steps closer to the warming lamp. From his view on the bed, half her body dips into shadow, but her eyes shine, wide, in the light.

“C’mere,” he motions her to step towards the bed.

As she approaches, he sees her trembling. He softens, takes her hand. “We can stop.”

“No!” she exclaims, a blush rising to her freckled cheeks. “No, please. This is what I want.”

He nods. It’s what he wants too. His next direction comes out rapidly: “Leg up.”

She sets it upon the bed next to him, knee at a ninety-degree angle, it forces her shirt to ride up exposing the sweet apex of her thighs, the soft mound of her center, and the dark curls of her pubes.

Din wets his dry lips. She stares at him, unabashed, but the rapid rising and falling of her chest suggest this little show excites her.

Finally, he touches her, sweetly, gently. As light as a feather he runs the back of his bare knuckles along her thigh, from her knee inward. Her eyes flutter shut and her chest bobs with another deep inhale, breasts heaving. He watches as she holds in a laugh, his touch edging on ticklish.

The flower still resides in her hair, tucked against her ear, it’s white petals and blue veins have not faded nor diminished, rather they glow in the amber waves of her hair. She’s stunning, beautiful—

“Mesh’la,” he utters the Mando’a word aloud before he can stop himself.

Her hands twitch at her sides, as if she’s fighting what to do with them.

“Shirt.”

She unbuttons it, each new reveal of skin makes his heart race faster. The array of freckles on her chest. The shadowed valley between her breasts. The smooth, roundness of her belly. He catches streaks of silver along the skin and curious, forgetting himself, he touches them with delicate hands. They’re stretch marks.

“Mesh’la,” he repeats, and has to wet his lips again, as his fingers kiss her skin. He wishes he could put his mouth there instead.

The shirt falls to the floor. Sana, now nude, stands before him. A goddess.

Her shyness has given way to boldness and she’s meeting his gaze directly. He can’t decide where to touch her first – the round breasts, those perfect hips. Eyes hungrily every bewitching curve.

She decides for him, taking his hand and directing it between her legs so he can feel how wet she is.

“This is what I want,” she sighs.

Transfixed, he watches while his hands, directed by her, glide along her warm slit. The dewy drops of her arousal coat his fingers.

The dull ache of his own need was an inferno now, but he dares not touch himself, not yet. Sana’s hand drop from his wrist, fall to the soft flight suit between his shoulder pauldrons clutching the material as if urging him on. He continues his ministrations, curving his fingers deeply inside her, crooking them forward and stroking; Sana’s reaction is immediate, the sturdy muscle of her thigh starts shaking mightily and her chin rose, elongating her neck.

He draws in a shaky breath, anchoring his other hand, palm sweating, on her hip just so. Twisting his wrist so his thumb knuckle can brush her clit, makes her breath hitch and he passes along it again and again, watching her reaction.

“Look at me,” he directs her, surprised he can even find his voice. It comes out raspy, edged with lust.

Glassy eyed, her head bows, and she returns his piercing gaze.

“I wanna watch while you come apart,” he says in a coarse murmur. “I wanna see that pretty face when you come.”

He’s never been particularly mouthy during sex. Just knows that he wants her, wants to see her face – after all this time.

Sana’s mouth falls open. He quickens his pace, adds a third finger. It’s a stretch. Her hips inch forward, pressing back into each thrust of his hand, meeting him. Legs shaking with the effort. He slides his hand from her hip to touch her breast, she gasps and curses while his hand pinches her nipple, squeezes the tender flesh. Holds her just underneath, hand splayed on her ribcage to keep her in place.

“So perfect,” he hums at her.

He knows she’s close when her body seizes, her lips are chanting his name, and as he circles her clit, tortuously slow. When she comes, her face crumples in pleasure. There’s a wet gush on his fingers, and she rides it out. Until, collapsing, spent, limp into his lap, red-faced and misty-eyed. Din withdraws his fingers, wipes them on the bedsheets and holds her.

The warmth of her body, soft and supple, is a remarkable contrast to the hard and cold metal that covers most of his body. She’s unbothered by it, her breasts pressed against his cuirass, panting into the woolen fibers of his cape.

“Good?” He asks because he’s out of practice, rubbing her back.

“Hmph,” Sana manages, and chuckles warmly. She lifts her face just enough to butt her forehead against his cheek plating. “Yeah.”

Shortly, they adjust so she’s lying on the bed, and Din begins to remove the remaining pieces of his armor, the beskar, the heavy flight suit. Sana watches sprawled on his bed; hazel eyes hooded and eager. He bends to remove a thigh piece and Sana scoots forward, assisting him. Their hands are practiced in this ritual and together they make short work of Din’s outer garments, baring him down to his final layers, and then, breathlessly, bare skin.

Sana’s hands travel across his broad torso, tracing the lines of his shoulders, the muscles of his pecks, the sweep of his tummy. His pants pool at his ankles, and his cock juts, proud, erect; he catches Sana licking her lips upon sighting it.

She has the curiosity of a traveler approaching a foreign world – but he is not foreign, familiar, rather – and her hands are greeting him as if they haven’t seen each other in a long time.

He supposes it has been. Din’s nervous suddenly, palms going sweaty again and his mouth feels like the desert of Tattooine.

“I want,” he starts, but has to stop, clear his throat.

Her hands pause on his hips, stopping just short of where he _needs_ her to touch him.

“I want you to have all of me.”

Then, turning away from her confused look, he walks over the warming lamp and shuts it off.

The darkness is so complete that Din almost forgets his immediate surroundings. He can only hear the nervous intakes of breath that he and Sana share. Down only to his helmet, he reaches up and takes it off.

The air is warm, scented sweetly. As the beskar makes an obvious sound as its set upon the ground, Sana’s breath increases. Din’s hands shake. They’re invisible in the darkness, Creed secure, but the intimacy of the act, the potential that the darkness offers is heady, dizzying, so arousing that Din’s belly pools with warmth, his cock aching.

There’s a soft pat on his chest. Sana’s hand reaching blindly forth and gaining courage rests on his body.

“Din,” her breath ghosts over his face, and then she feels her hands travel up his neck and onto his face.

She touched his face for the first time last night, but the caresses are still so novel to him, to his touch-starved self, that it feels strange and illicit. Her hands find all her favorite spots, cataloguing each texture under her fingertips, already admiring the dimple on his cheek, the scar on his nose – as if she remembered each thing and sought them deliberately this time around.

“You’re so beautiful. I just know you are,” she whispers, and her face is so close, close enough that all he has to do is dip his head, and suddenly his nose brushes her cheek. She makes a soft whimper, stuck in the back of her throat.

He has to hold her, his hands explore for the best purchase, first on her shoulders, tickling with just the tips of his fingers, gliding up and down her arms he feels goosebumps pop up on her flesh. Then he touches her hair – he dreams of her hair. At first lightly, then brushing his fingers through it.

She walks him backwards towards where they both know the bed is, then the back of his knees catch on the edge and he’s tumbling backwards onto the mattress and she falls over him with a throaty laugh. Her weight settles comfortably over him and, even blindly, she arranges herself, so their bodies are flush, entwined, lying side by side.

Her cheek is so soft and smooth comparted to his patchy, coarse beard when he places his broad hand on her face. Their breaths mingle.

“K-kiss me,” she sighs. “ _Din_ , kiss me.”

Tenderly, he does. Just a light peck on plush lips, one after another, until they gain momentum, hungry, eager, curious to the sensation. They’re noses bump clumsily, and he cradles her face so he can suck on her bottom lip, nip it lightly with his teeth. Her mouth parts, breath fanning outwards shakily and she makes a strained noise, keening, desperate, and he smothers the sound in another kiss, his tongue dancing into her mouth.

They roll so she’s beneath him, and he presses, urgently, closer. Her legs part for him and his cock brushes the inside of her thigh, heavy and firm. An unbidden moan falls from his lips at the sweet pressure, almost overstimulated by all the touching. He croons her name, hushed, it falls from his unseen lips.

He’s caught between wanting to take his time and yearning to devour her.

“What do you want?” She breathlessly asks him, letting her hands wander down his back.

“I want you, just like this,” he answers, clear-eyed.

“Take it then,” she rasps.

“I warn you,” he kisses down her neck, feels the gallop of her pulse beneath his lips. They stray further down her yearning body, he finds one of her breasts, slots his mouth over the peak of her nipple.

He delights in the noises she makes, the soft sighing and then, when he swirls his tongue, the chocked off gasp, and fervent way she rubs herself against him. Her soaked center making wet streaks on his thigh. Patiently, he pays the same attention on her other breast until she’s nearly sobbing beneath him, hands gripping the back of his head with fierce need.

“I warn you,” he repeats. “I won’t be gentle.”

He wonders at her expression, wishes briefly that there was a light on so he could witness her pleasure once again. The half-lidded eyes, the dazed expression, the way she moans; admire the way her skin might grow flush, spots of color appearing on her freckled chest; see her eyes, pupils blown wide with arousal would blacken.

When he drops his hand between her legs, she is exquisitely ready for him all over – already wet and dripping. That’s nearly enough to send him over, and wetting his cock through her slit, hitting on that bundle of her nerves she bucks and keens, hearing and feeling her arousal – _gods_ , he’s ready, more than ready.

“ _Please_ ,” she mewls, panting heavily. “I’m yours, Din. It’s just you. It’s just you.”

Gripping with one hand, he guides himself to her entrance, and then _impales_ her with a quick motion. Her body shudders, and she cries ecstatically, arms splayed open to grip the sheets. Din nearly loses it, feeling her sex so warm and tight and perfect, exactly where he wants to be, where he’s dreamed. The fit is snug, and she breathes shallowly through her nose, adjusting to him. Like a flower, she flutters for him.

Din rights himself, keeping themselves conjoined, he sits on his knees, hands on her round hips, bracketing her legs around him. The pace he sets is brutal, carnal. Sana takes every thrust.

He can’t see her; her body is no more than a vague outline in the night, but the _sounds_ , the sounds of their bodies – he shudders at the obscenity of it. Follows his own feverish grunts that his own mouth makes, the litany of words falling off her lips, the grip of her on his own cock. Feeling his own pleasure rear inside him, he has to slow down, altering course to near stillness. Sana sobs, writhes. Drawing out the wet, warmth of her pussy, feeling it stretch over his length.

“There’s no-nobody else,” she stutters.

Something feral rises like bile in his throat, growling, snarling, he tightens his hold on her. “Whose pussy is this?” he grates out.

Sana comes undone. He can feel her walls shuttering, she’s getting close. He dips a hand between them, finds her – finds where they meet, slipping in and out of her, and her tight, swollen clit and rubs rapid fire circles while rolling his hips in wide circles.

“Huh, whose pussy is this?”

“Yours!” she gasps, “it’s yours.”

It ignites her, muffling her cry with a hand over her mouth, she shudders and releases, soaking his cock as he pistons in and out of her. It’s too much, and Din, feeling her squeeze around him, follows suit in quick succession, hips driving a sloppy rhythm.

He crashes his face forwards, between the valley of her breasts and takes long gulps of air, nearly blacking out with the force of his powerful orgasm. He comes to, blinking confusedly because the darkness is still so stark, he thinks for a second, he must have dreamt it.

In the darkness, he hears Sana’s soft muttering in Mando’a, petting his hair, and the rich sounds of her laughter.

“What’s so funny?” He lifts his head enough to ask, kissing the soft pillow of her breast before laying his cheek on it.

“Don’t you hold back on me again, Djarin. Stars above.”

Din laughs right back. “I _did_ warn you.”

“If you have enough energy for round two, you lemme know.”

“I’m still inside you,” he huffs.

She hums, humoring him and giving an experimental squeeze around his softening cock.

* * *

Neither sleep much. They lie together for a long while, going in and out of sleep. He’s still buried inside her, longed to be as close as he can be. Spooned behind her back, they’re hands entangled on her belly. He wakes, feels himself hardening inside her, and she’s making little gyrating grinds against him.

The aroma of their sex hangs silkily in the air, musky and bittersweet.

He returns her movements with shallow thrusts. It makes their combined wetness drip out of her, fall on the bedsheets beneath them. He presses his nose into her back.

“Roll over,” he mutters into her skin.

She does and arches her hips to give him a better angle so he can continue to rock into her. Takes his time with her, indulging every sensation. Nibbles on her earlobe, loves the way her breath rattles.

When she’s on the cusp, mewling and shuddering beneath him. He lowers his hand to take pity on her. Caught between the sensation of his cock filling her, and the sweet rubbing of his hand on her clit, her body lurches until she’s a sobbing mess, going limp in his arms. He praises her, a heated tremor of words spill from his lips, telling her how beautiful she feels, how wet, how perfect she is. Heat floods from her pussy, and he thrusts once, twice, three times more before he’s spilling into her with a series of grunts.

They fall back onto the bed sweating and panting. He pushes the damp strands of her hair off her neck so he can press his face there. Sticky, they fall asleep like that.

When he wakes a second time, the beginnings of grey light peek just barely through the tent. He’s lying on his back, Sana is pressed on his side and running her hands over his belly. It’s dark enough inside, but it will be dawn soon.

He’s turning over a question in his mind, come to him perhaps in some dream.

“How come you never took another mate?” He asks her.

She stills, her fingers pausing on his sternum. The questions astounds her.

He hadn’t meant to bring it up with her. But it had always irked him, like a fly in the corner of his vision. She had told him, upon one of their early Ritual couplings about her mate – the one who had died tragically just a month before the wars ended. Ever since then, even now, seeing her take up the mantle of leadership, it seemed obvious that she should remarry. Given all the discussions and innuendos from Paz, especially, calling him Consort, got Din thinking.

Why had she never thought to claim another _riduur_?

“I—I…I don’t know.” She rubs her cheek against his peck, granting a soft press of her lips here and there. “I wasn’t ready, I guess. Everything changed so quickly. And when I lost Zavi, for awhile I thought myself cursed: that everyone I loved would leave me in some way.”

He doesn’t have to see her face to know that a pinched expression hovers on her face, creates a pucker between her brows. Din rushes to blot it out. She relaxes under his soothing touch, nuzzling into his open palm.

His hands tangle in her hair and he presses a sturdy kiss to her lips. “I’m still here,” he says with a slight tease. “And you’re not cursed.” He kisses her nose, her cheek, each eyelid, the spot between her brows.

She smiles, and he can feel it as he places a kiss at the upturned corner of her mouth. “Your moustache is tickling me,” she says, breaking just enough before going in for another kiss.

“Marry me then.”

“Din,” she chides.

“There’s nobody else,” he reasons. His voice has no marks of hesitation, just clarity. “Like you said, it’s just you.”

She’s quiet for moments longer than Din would like. In the semi-darkness, he can begin to make out the outline of her person. She doesn’t pull away either.

“Sana,” his nose caresses her, foreheads brushing. “I love you.”

Her hands cradle his face. “Okay,” she breathes. “Okay.”

When he kisses her cheek, he finds it’s wet. She’s silently crying, so he holds her tighter.

“I love you, Din,” she whispers, kissing him back fiercely. “I love you.”

Just before dawn, Din lay Sana back amongst the covers and heavy blankets on his sleeping pallet. Kissing down the length of her body until he came to that lovely center he craves so much. He breathes in in her smell, following his nose with an experimental lick right on the sodden lips of her pussy.

Humming, enjoying the taste of her, mixed with his own cum, he lavishes her with kisses and long broad swipes of his tongue, then timid licks, and sucks on her clit. Mumbling words of encouragement into her body, telling her how _good_ she tastes. Closing his eyes, he savors every drop as she shakes and cries, thighs trembling around his ears.

Just before he makes her orgasm for the fourth time that night, he chances a glance upwards. Drinks in the delectable sight of her, moaning and frazzled, head thrown back against the pillow; the taut muscles of her neck straining with tension; the mounds of her breasts heaving, like trembling mountains; the silver streaks of her stretch marks across her belly dance as her breath quickens. They’re hands twine together on her hips and he grinds his face into her until she’s plunging off the edge, suspended in bliss.

He licks her clean, groaning into her, and she has to gently pull him off her because she’s oversensitive

Playing with his messy curls, she says, after she’s collected her breath: “You better put your helmet back on.” Because the light is growing stronger.

He finds his helmet, rolled away from the edge of the bed, and sets it on his face. By time he’s made it back to the bed, Sana’s breathing has evened out and she’s fast asleep. Chuckling, he tucks in rightfully behind her, pulling the covers over their naked bodies, and gets a few more hours of rest next to his woman.

 _Wife_ , he thinks, just before he drifts off. _His wife._

* * *

There’s some sort of commotion in the village when Din and Sana join them. They notice that the usual bustle of the market is gone, the streets are empty, only the occasional armored Mandalorian walks through.

Sana spots Paz standing by the entrance to the town. Din follows her.

“What’s going on?” she asks him, concern and agitation furrowing her pretty face.

“Dunno,” Paz shrugs. “Something about a tree.”

There’s a trail of local villagers gathering some ways beyond the outskirts of the village. Din recognizes it’s the same area where he, Sana and the Child were walking through just yesterday. The unseasonably warm air has continued overnight, and nearly all the snow has melted away. Red and green grasses pop up. It’s not the only surprise.

The tall, elder tree has bloomed overnight – the very one that the Child pointed out. It’s proud branches are completely covered in the strange white and blue petals of the native flower. The same flower Sana had tucked into her hair, and now rests, slightly crumpled, on Din’s pillow.

The Ming Po are gathered beneath it, some on their knees in reverence, others are holding hands and singing, or chanting words in some ancient language. In one small circle, a group of older women pass the aromatic flower back and forth, smelling its rich scent.

“Myla,” Sana finds the woman she’s befriended. “What’s happening?”

“This tree – it’s flowered,” Myla says. There are tears in her eyes. “It has not bloomed in over thirty years.”

“Surely, it’s a sign!” Wails Myla’s father beside her. His face, lined with the years, is positively beaming. “The gods are granting us a gift.”

Above them, the age-old tree with its wild flowers sway, humming, alive and listening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Riduur - spouse/husband/wife  
> Mesh'la - beautiful
> 
> This piece is winding down for sure. I think I've only got a few more chapters here. But it's been such a wonderful journey writing for this fandom and my dear readers you're all so excellent! So please leave some kudos, comments, and love. I treasure all of them. 
> 
> xoxo


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A chapter of (re)unions.
> 
> Chapter warnings: sparring, light angst, smut

“Ready?”

Sana grinds her teeth, sets the purple helmet upon her head, hiding what he can only assume is a competitive glare behind the tenebrous glare of the visor.

“You’re on.”

Her movements are slower, more deliberate. She’s goes for his head first – he’s expecting it, and deftly blocks the fist primed for his nose. But it’s a feint, because she’s spinning away from his block, to jab the blunt edge of her knee into his stomach. Din doubles over, hands up in a defensive stance.

The two armored Mandalorians circle each other. Each eying the other for a weakness.

It’s the end of the first week of their practice and Sana’s improving. Their workouts are rough; Din keeps her on her toes. Though, by nightfall, they’re massaging out each other’s sore bodies, languidly stretching and caressing each other, applying creams and bacta. The salves a surreal counterpart of tenderness to the day’s intensity. Despite not fighting or training for months, Sana’s muscle memory kicks in.

Din’s been showing her a few moves Paz has shared. It’s become a bonding experience for them – the grunt and sweat of the sparring, the adrenaline rush, the taunting. Coupled with the occasional rejoinder from Din, reminding her to keep her guard up.

Sana is a quick learner, naturally. The Fighting Corp is in her blood. She is a warrior through and through. She’s smaller than him, but wider, and – he rightfully remembers – still brutal. All her strength is in her legs. Powerful hips and thighs.

Her leg shoots out, kicking behind his knee, and he staggers with the force of it.

She’s on the offensive. Din blocks and parries blow after blow.

A double jab, followed by a left elbow – stirring the air as it whistled, inches from his helmet. Din aims a right hook, and it catches her, throwing her head off at an angle. Barely a breath later, Sana snarls and knocks her knee into his chest cuirass, but Din grabs hold of her biceps and they go rolling into the grass.

He successfully pins her beneath him, holding down her wrists, knees spread over her torso.

He sits back, careful he’s not pressing too much of his weight into her. Sana’s heavy pants can be heard, coming out forcefully from under the lip of her helm. She squirms, peeved at the way it ended, but not hurt.

“You’re catching on,” he offers, proudly.

“Yeah, yeah.”

His touch on her wrists lessens only by a fraction. She could flip them easily, if she wants, but she doesn’t. The offer of her body beneath him is a tantalizing prospect. They’re nearly mimicking a position from earlier this morning. Of course, in _that_ instance, both were wearing significantly less clothing. A heat prickles marginally under the surface of his skin.

The angle of Sana’s helmet suggests she’s remembering it too. Then, she flexes her hips upwards. It’s hardly noticeable if one were to observe, perhaps could be mistaken for an attempt on her part to shake him off her, adjust to the weight of him positioned so. But Din feels the soft cloth of her armor, bunched between her groin, grinds distinctly under his thigh. Coupled with the soft sigh that came from her mouth, he knows it’s deliberate.

“Another round?” He cocks his helm at her, not easing up the pressure on her wrists.

Her hips rise, imperceptibly, seeking friction where they’re joined. “How about a bet?” Sana taunts, and this time the firm roll of her hips under him abrade across his groin and a surge of heat follows in its wake.

“I’m not much of a gambler.”

He’s sure she’s got a curl to her pretty mouth underneath her helm. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

* * *

Later, as Din’s tying the cloth over Sana’s patient eyes. His excitement is in her offer. Din is a man unused to accepting the gentleness from others, certain that it will all vanish before his untrusting, undeserving eyes.

“Not too tight?” he checks the knot of the silk material.

Sana’s head shakes in the negative, and the plushness of her bottom lip turns pink as she sinks her teeth into the soft flesh there, nearly breaking the skin.

“Good,” he tests the knot. Loose enough he could slide a finger easily underneath it, but covers her vision entirely. Creed secure, he slips the helmet off.

Sana waits, listening to the sounds of him settling in behind her, pulling her into his lap so he can nibble the shell of her ear. His breath makes goosebumps appear on her skin, and a hot flush rise on her chest.

“These nights pass too quickly,” he mumbles, inhaling the scent of his lover’s hair. A spicy and sweet combination. “When are we doing it?”

Sana blindly swats at his thigh. “Getting impatient, are we?”

“Only because I want to see the look on Paz’ helm when we tell him we’re married.”

She grabs his hand so she can kiss the scarred knuckles. Rolls over, pressing herself along Din’s front, and sliding her hands down his torso until he’s pliant beneath her. Din admires the view of her breasts smushed into his chest, the smattering of freckles, the sharp line of her collarbone and the unruly hair falling down her back.

His head is filled with so many wicked scenarios he doesn’t know how to answer her.

“C’mon now, beroya,” she circles her hips on his groin. “You won fair and square. A bet’s a bet. How do you want me?”

Despite the intensity of their sparring, their lovemaking is tender. Din takes his time with her. He’s soft, serious, and earnest.

She’s pliant, but her back still arches like a bow. Letting him take control. They near completion together, spent but sated, their bodies moving in tandem. A call and response.

With her thighs spread over his lap, ass flush to his hips, circling the gorgeous, swollen nub of her clit, she feels her sex contract around his cock as she comes down from her high, panting, sweat-slick body melting. One large hand under her breast, splayed across her ribcage to hold her in place, he fucks into her to find his own release. She arches, taut and perfect above him. Blindly reaching for him, gripping his thigh, his hip, as if to hold herself to him, meld them together under the combined heat.

He kisses her shoulder blades, the muscles in her spine, languidly, almost drunk from his orgasm. Gathers the downy soft curtain of her hair in his fist and pulls, lightly, but intentionally enough, and she stretches her neck, chasing the heady feeling to expose the long line of her neck. An offer of her submission to him. Where _no others_ shall know it. A hot streak shreds through him with that knowledge.

Sana paints a pretty picture, spread just so over his own legs. The muscle ripples under the skin, the curves of her body soft in the hazy light, emanating from the warming lamp in the center of the room. The aroma of the tent is heady, diffused light on smooth skin, broken only by the pattern of scarring, silvery threads across her belly.

Her body is an altar. He shall always be the first and only supplicant before her. An undying admirer of her maternal form, her womanly features. The duality of warrior and mother: the fierce and bold, the supple and strong.

She waits, with bated, shortened breaths, awaiting her next command. He sets his palm across her hip, touching just low enough to settle partially on her ass, squeezes.

“Such a good girl for me.”

Sana’s mouth falls open in an aroused gasp. “Y-yes,” she stutters.

The pert buds of her nipples create sharp peaks on her breasts. He holds one, tenderly, cupping it in his hand. His cock twitches back to life, still buried inside her, and his body shudders, tingling with pent up arousal.

“So perfect,” he coos into her ear.

* * *

The heavy infantry armored man has no modesty about him, for one skulking around outside Sana’s tent. In fact, he appears quite smug. It takes a second, but Din realizes he’s holding the Child, dwarfed by one large hand, holding him upright.

“Found this little guy came to breakfast early,” Paz says, holding up the precious bundle, who chirps out a greeting. Crumbs from his snack flying out of his mouth. “Was wondering when you two were done.”

Din’s stomach drops out and his face falls beneath the mask of his armor, suddenly shame faced. He and Sana had been acting like a couple of preteens hiding their relationship from others, and now, under Paz’ gaze, they are both like startled animals.

Sana’s the first to recover, schooling her features into natural coolness. “Ah Paz. I’ve been looking for you. Din and I have been having a discussion.”

Skepticism is evident in Paz stance, and his voice. “Is that what you’ve been having? A _discussion_ ,” he mocks.

The tiniest amount of pink appears on Sana’s freckled cheeks. “ _Yes_ ,” she pronounces, a bit forcefully.

“About what?” Paz tone is toeing the line of lecherous, but not outright.

Din knows Paz is straddling any sort of line when it comes to Sana Kryze, just enough out of respect for her rank, but also jovially, because _of course_ he does; enough to rattle the cage, get under Din’s skin.

He opens his mouth to respond, but Sana beats him to it.

“Riduurok,” she states simply.

Casting her a quick glance, Din understands: out here, she’s in control.

That apparently is not the answer Paz Vizla thought she would give. The immense man goes still. Noticeably, too, compared to the obvious uptick in the Child’s ears at the word and the charged nature of the group. Then, Paz helm swivels rapidly between Sana and Din, and before either can move, he’s passing the kid to Sana’s arms.

Din immediately goes on the defensive, flexing his arms up to defend from whatever attack is coming his way from the larger man. Paz ducks and weaves, hoisting his wide arms around the bounty hunter’s torso.

“You di’kut!” He booms, lifting the man off the ground slightly.

Din bucks and squirms, jabbing his elbow into Paz’ shoulder, but the heavier man is laughing as he twirls, holding around Din’s waist.

“Finally! Djarin the Consort – you di’kut!”

Sana starts laughing, and so does the little one, and his toothy grin widens.

Din isn’t sure how to react. Paz was never one for affection unless it was violent. So, he squirms. “Vizla, put me down,” he grates.

“We need to celebrate!” Paz is all but hoisting Din over his shoulder, excitedly clapping him upon the back.

“Calm down, Paz. Not yet,” Sana berates.

“When?” He drops Din unceremoniously upon the ground.

“Soon.”

“You mean you haven’t unmasked him—” He makes a teasing pass towards the lip of the other’s helmet, and growling, Din parries it with a brunt smack of his palm.

“He’s a pretty one under there,” Paz continues, playfully knocking Din’s pauldron. “Prettiest one in our Fighting Corps, ain’t that right, Djarin? Unless someone’s knocked all his teeth out.”

“I have all my teeth,” Din growls, irate.

Paz’ laugh shakes his whole body. The baby joins in too, and even Din begrudging manages a dry chuckle. The pleasant warmth of the morning permeates under his skin, and he abashedly shakes his head at the other Mandalorians.

“Kryze,” Paz intones. It’s so serious, even Sana’s expression falters. The man places a surprisingly tender hand over his heart. “The Tribe will be honored by your selection. I cannot hide my disappointment that House Vizla was not chosen, but I am proud of your decision all the same.”

Sana’s nod is a solemn gesture, but her smile gracefully reaches her eyes, flitting over to test Din’s reaction. “Thank you, Paz.”

* * *

Din’s nightmares return.

He wakes one night, sweating, panting, gasping in the dark night air, a great pressure sinking into his chest. Ceaselessly, the images swerve in his head, compounded with the very real anguish producing a heady mix of hormones and adrenaline that made his muscles spasm and his heartrate escalate.

They all told the same thing: he is never good enough, never quick enough, not sharp enough for fatherhood. The cries, hallucinatory, ragged, broken, horrible cries of a babe droned in his ears, rang loud, twisting his hold on reality.

His immediate thoughts were concern for the Child, but they were soothed by the loud, questioning coo that pierce the darkness, settling warmly over Din’s agitated mind.

“Eh?” The sound comes again, gurgling from somewhere near his feet.

Din’s helmet sits discarded at the foot of the bed, and the pillow beside him is empty. Odd, because Sana had fallen asleep beside him hours ago. His mind scrambles to catch up to the present. The pillow is indeed vacant – rumbled and cold, where her head had lain.

“Ad’ika?” He speaks aloud, throat seizing.

The Child answers in a warbling coo, and Din feels the blankets move by his feet and the noisy pants of the Child scrambling across the bedsheets.

The little one shuffles close to his father, pressing his round cheeks into Din’s arm, hands tapping on the skin. Crooking the baby between his elbow and his chest, Din bends to retrieve the helmet, slipping the familiar weight over his head, like a balm. His wounded and addled brain finds security in the weight of the beskar.

 _In and out. Breathe with me_. He imagines Sana’s voice whispering to him, just as she had previously, the last time his paranoia had gotten the better of him. _One more. In and out._

Slowly, his body calms. The soft fussing of the Child, alive, apparently awake; the distinct smell of beskar; the quiet sounds of the night outside.

“Just a nightmare,” he sighs, sotto voce to the womp rat, making more cooing noises beside him. “Nothing more.”

The Child’s large ear tickles Din’s shoulder, in reassurance of its presence.

Din pats the empty pillow beside him, speaking mindlessly to the Child to distract himself. “Where’d she go, huh, ad’ika? Where do you think she went?”

He dresses and heads out as the Mandalorian camp slumbers.

Spring had come to Carlac.

In the past few days, the weather slowly turned warmer. Gone were the harsh winds that often ripped through the camp, unsettling the tent flaps, or disturbing the capes of the Mandalorians. The chill that settled over the nights, creeping up under the carpets, or through the cracks in the doors had vanished as well, leaving in its wake, a kind of stillness, and occasionally, if one caught the timing of the sun just right, a certain pleasant warmth.

The obvious sign is the loss of snow. Now no more than a wistful sigh across those distant mountains’ peaks, the ground turned muddy and green. The occasional sprout shooting forth with great pride.

According to the local Ming Po, spring is a short affair on Carlac; the summer even briefer.

Din’s boots squelch in the mud, as he, and the Child securely held in his father’s arms, walk in the compound. The dawn air is crisp, bringing with it a sweet smell of promise.

They pass the Elder Tree, the inky blue flower and white petals nearly glowing in the pre-dawn air. An influx of locals from far and wide came to see the ancient being in bloom. They were in a mystery as to how it came to be, as the customs and folklore of the people are kept secret from outsiders. To the Ming Po, the blooming of the tree and the arrival of spring brings hope. Nevertheless, the Mandalorians are respectful, but a tad flummoxed, not much a superstitious folk themselves.

The Child makes a timid squeak, then a shiver travels through his small body. Din pauses, looking down at the wide owl-like orbs of black, the Child blinking slowly back at him.

“What is it?”

The Child must _sense_ something with whatever power over Nature he possesses. For, from above, a low rumbling came from far off. Din’s audials pick it up, registering it as the exact same frequency of a ship, flying in stealth mode, landing not too far from the gathered covert.

Curiosity piqued, senses already heightened, and adrenaline quickly coursing through him, Din makes his way in the direction of where the low rumbling is coming from. Easily enough, he soon spots a familiar sleek outline of the Mandalorian built transport ship belonging to the Tribe, skimming over the treetops to come to land in a field.

Backlit by the ship’s landing lights, Din can just make out the recognizable silhouette of Sana, standing at attention, as still as a tree, as the ship docks. Her large white cape fans out around her, blowing in the disturbed air as the ship’s whirring slows down, and the ramp lowers.

Two bodies in black armor strut down the ramp. The beskar proud and true. The clanswomen greet their leader with formality, then, breaking the tension like a vibroblade through flesh, the women all break into laughter and hug each other. Embracing Sana in their midst, their excited voices carry over to where Din stands watching, curiously.

The tallest one Din recognizes as Se-Lenah Rook, Sana’s Commander, comes last down the ramp. A small dark bundle held against her breast, and Din strains to figure out what she’s carrying.

In Din’s arms the Child stirs, also piqued by the flashing lights and sleek armored figures up ahead.

A small cry rises up.

Din blanches. Thinking his head is playing games with him, for it resembles the phantom cries from his nightmare. The cries of a babe.

It’s coming from the small bundle in Se-Lenah’s arms.

The other women all turn to look, murmuring gently. Sana’s form seems to sway, unsteadily on her own two feet. Her knees buckle, her arms clutch tightly the fabric of those clanswomen nearest her. From his vantage point, Din cannot see the expression on her face, but he imagines it had gone lax, fallen, stirred with a vulnerable expression. The crease over her brow would be stark and cross, and there’d be a trembling on her lower lip.

The babe cries again; the swaddled form more animated as it’s disturbed from slumber.

Se-Lenah beckons her closer, and wordlessly, the purple armored woman struggles to take a step. The moment is almost divine. The lights of the ship, the cocoon of the forest around them. The shining beskar of the warriors, and in the center, the Mother, arms upraised, reaching for her child.

Din’s finding it hard to swallow. He should turn back. He has a sense that he is witnessing something sacrosanct, but he cannot tear his eyes away. He runs a quick calculation. Probably around seven months old by now, certainly no more than that. A small, tender thing, maybe a little larger than the Child.

Sana bends, making herself smaller as she approaches the babe. Taking the bundle from Se-Lenah’s patient arms with tenderness. The blanket falls open and Din catches a glimpse of tiny hands reaching out, chubby arms, and he hears the tempered cooing noises of An-Talya, first born of Sana Kryze, conceived during the Ritual.

Though he stands partially obscured by the tree line, the women sense his presence, and turn to him. The bodies of her clanswomen part, dividing like the seas, and Din comes face to face with mother and daughter. Sana’s pretty visage is focused on the babe as Din steps into the warm circle of light. Over his shoulder the first rays of the dawn are peeking over the horizon, as if also wanting to catch a glance at the precious cargo held tightly to her breast.

The Child’s ears are raised so high, and he makes a gurgling noise, to which Sana acknowledges with a starry smile.

“Would you like to meet her?”

The bounty hunter gazes at the babe in her arms. He sees round cheeks, a triangle mouth opening and closing. There’s a dusting of dark hair atop her head, with wide curious eyes, black like midnight. So dark, the pupil is lost in it. Wiggling her arms excitedly at all the attention drawn to her.

Unthinkingly he’s reaching an index finger out at this twenty-pound image of innocence, and Anya grasps it firmly, crunching the leather tightly.

The Child in his arms stares at the precious babe, makes an admiring trill, melodious and sweet.

Something primal twists, rears its head, inside Din. He’s not entirely lucid to it, cannot name the amorphous feeling of protective instinct that kicks into high gear upon seeing his flesh and blood. Undeniably.

“When she was first born, I couldn’t stop staring at her,” Sana says, speaking like she’s in a dream. “For hours, while she slept, I would keep my vigil, thinking that if I broke it for even a second, it would vanish. That she was no more than a strange vision. I couldn’t believe she was real.”

Din comments, “She looks like…”

There’s admiration – transparent, conclusive – in Sana’s hazel eyes as her gaze turns to the opaque visor.

“Like me,” Din finishes.

Anya twists her round face to look between the faces peering over her and her button nose scrunches, her mouth opening in a soft croon. Din feels his insides melt a little more, like a command spoken directly to his very core breaches through him. Between the two babies, the green one in his arms, and the one beholding him with an open face, eyes as dark as his, he’ll battle the whole universe, all space and time itself, to see them kept safe.

* * *

Din finds himself alone with her, he hovers silently over the crib as the baby wakes from a midday nap. She’s unperturbed by the cut of his intimidating, armored figure. Eyes moving rapidly to take in all the new stimuli – the shiny metal helmet of primary focus. She makes a garbled sound, giggling when Din reaches out another finger to her and she sticks it in her mouth, experimenting on the taste.

Fussing, he pulls it out of reach in time. Anya giggles again, a large smile breaking across her tiny face, puffing out her cheeks, her eyes trusting.

“Don’t wanna eat that,” he chides her, gently, when she tries to put his gloved finger in her mouth again, thinking it’s some kind of game.

She’s perfect. Tiny feet, chubby limbs, two small nubs of teeth on her bottom gums. The dark hair on top of her head is mussed from her nap, and Din smooths the delicate curls with his palm.

The baby sneezes suddenly, and she smiles fondly at the dark visor above her. Blinking slowly, her face seizing up as another tiny sneeze ripples through her body.

Din chuckles, wheezily, forced out his mouth at the sound, like a squeak. The moment is so tender, he’s overwhelmed. The man is nearly undone, brought to near tears, by a seven-month old sneezing.

“My name is Din,” he introduces himself to the baby, petting the smooth round head. “I’m your—”

A harsh emotion cuts him off. Din has to swallow, pull himself together to continue.

“I’m your…” He chokes on a sob, a broken sound, and he has to turn away. The confines of his helmet are constricting.

The baby doesn’t seem to notice, continuing to gurgle and make funny noises with her mouth, kicking her legs around. She won’t let go of Din’s hand, opening and closing her mouth around the smooth leather, wincing at the taste, biting with no teeth.

“You probably won’t remember this,” he croaks, laughing because he’s trying to have a conversation with a seven-month-old. “Hell, I don’t know if this is even allowed.”

Gulping in large amounts of air, Din steadies himself, and easily lifts the squirming child out of the crib into his arms. She giggles at the change in position, eyes flitting all over the helm, trying to make sense of it. He holds her upright, cushioning the baby’s bottom on his forearm, with his other hand, he grips under the lip of his helmet and takes it off his head.

The babe’s eyes widen, taking in the new face, but she does not whimper, nor cry. Merely amazed, Anya stares.

He remembers the first time he showed his face to his own Foundling, how he had been so unsure, so used to seeing him with his helmet, that the loss of his head so shocked the Child that he burst into tears, recovering only when Din soothed it with sweet affirmations. Since then, growing used to seeing Din’s reveal, even marveling at it, in his own way, particularly the bits of hair he could grab, the occasional swat at his cheeks, or – Maker forbid – grab tightly at his nostrils.

Anya’s tongue lolls out, and she gabs out a series of sputtering noises, exuberant baby talk that makes Din sheepishly grin. She’s a talker too, like her mother, it seems.

“Yeah, I know, that’s my face,” he says, bouncing the babe.

Her small hands tap at his cheeks, and the dam breaks in his soul. A few stray tears fall down his eyes, and he takes a calming breath. “I’m your dad,” he says, swallowing down a morsel of truth. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Gently, he ducks to tap the spot between his brows on Anya’s round head, as if his words are sealed, the promise of a kiss, and she gushes, laughs. Her smile is wide and infectious, mirrors Din’s perfectly.

They stay like that for a long while. Father and daughter.

Until a faint sound of boots comes from outside the tent, and Din can hear Sana and his ad’ika making small talk as they enter.

Sana’s familiar laugh cuts short upon noticing him. “Excuse me, you can’t be in here,” Din hears her voice over his shoulder, and his breath hitches in his throat.

Her face turns blank with confusion, searching along his form for recognition. The gears visibly turning in her head. The Child recognizes helmetless Din, and makes a happy gurgle, stretching his arms towards his father. Sana looks down at the kid, then back up to him. Puts two and two together.

The Mandalorian hadn’t meant for the reveal to be like this. He had a whole plan for their wedding night, but he couldn’t bring himself to replace the beskar armor atop his head, finding himself calmly turning from the armament upon the table nearby and standing to his full height.

“Cyare,” he mutters, “I can—”

His voice confirms her lingering doubts. Sana’s hand flies to cover her eyes, she teeters, takes a half-step backwards. The corresponding movement makes the Child giggle, babble lightly.

“I didn’t— I should have—”

He can’t imagine how unkempt he must look. The helmet hair and dark circles under his eyes; he hadn’t thought to trim his facial hair recently and the scruff is untamed, patchy on his chin. There were scars aplenty on his face, across the bridge of his nose most prominently. Din works his jaw, trying to find the words to comfort her.

“It’s my choice, Sana, look at me.”

She had always believed in the power of individual choice, and, taught him that too. Since he had upturned his entire life upon meeting the Child, acting without hesitation, without fear of the consequences, with nobility and honor – those were the most important teachings of the Mandalorian way of life. And now here stands, confronting the next thing. The decision to prematurely show his face. The last boundary.

He steps gently towards her, holding firmly onto Anya.

“My love,” he whispers. “Look at me.”

Sana relaxes, drops the hand slowly from her face. She tilts her head, leaning back slightly to get a better look at him.

Din returns her gaze, without the mediation of the visor between them, or the cloth over her eyes, he feels immensely vulnerable.

“It’s time.” He kisses Anya’s temple.

Sana’s catalogued every part of his face under her hands. Felt every wrinkle and dimple. The hair on his jaw, the scar. And now, she’s examining him with the same calculating precision, with scholarly devotion; there’s a caress in the way her eyes rove over his features, like a hungry traveler seeing a magnificent site for the first time. It makes Din breathless, dropping his eyes to hide from the intensity of it. Feels the blush rising onto his face; focuses on the baby in his arms.

“You’re so beautiful,” she utters, “I knew it.”

The Child warbles, sympathetic, aware of the emotions coursing through his father, and reaches, patting Din’s exposed cheek with his three-fingered hand.

Din laughs, giving the Child a lopsided smile, then meets Sana’s eyes once more. She’s holding back from weeping, and it stirs Din. She brushes back the curls that cover his temple, cradles his cheek. Their foreheads bump, affectionately, the Child and Anya planted between them.

“It’s just you,” he tells her, “it’s just us. Repeat after me.”

* * *

Anya sleeps often. The baby has to adjust to the change in environment, from the accommodations of being in hiding, and now, around her mother full-time. Sana took to carrying her daughter in a sling on her chest full-time; attending council meetings and Ming Po negotiations, dressed in full armor, and a tiny, slumbering, drooling babe, cheek pressed, snug in the warm material. The beat of Sana’s heart under her ear at all times.

(The Child is a near constant presence in the baby’s life too. Not prone to jealousy, the two little ones were favored playmates, with ad’ika doting on his small sibling with tenderness. Anya would soon far outgrow her infant phase, long before ad’ika will, and soon would become a “big” sister.)

Anya wakes up in the middle of the night, demanding to be fed, and Sana sighing all the while, unbuttons her tunic and offers her breast for the babe to suckle.

“Guess she’s hungry,” Sana comments, grumpily, noting the eagerness in which the baby feeds.

Sleepily, Din rises from their bed, tucking the Child in among the blankets and goes to join his wife and other child, parting his knees to sit behind her, coaxing Sana to relax backwards into the envelop of his arms while she breastfeeds. He dotes on his sleep-deprived wife, kissing her temple, rocking her smoothly, places a protecting hand at the back of Anya’s head.

“I love watching you feed her,” he admits. “It’s oddly sexy.”

It makes Sana laugh lightly. “Tell that to my exhausted, bitten nipples. Nothing sexy about milk.”

Din nuzzles along Sana’s neck. “It’s a gift. A miracle. She’s come all the way back to you.”

“To us,” Sana adds.

“You’ve given up a lot for her.”

Sana heaves a heavy sigh. “I keep telling myself I deserve this.”

The baby’s suckles break off, and Anya lifts her cheek to smile and coo at the two adults above her.

“You do,” Din strokes Anya’s face, returning her grin. She’s so tiny and fragile in his broad hands.

“Done, then?” Sana asks the baby, but she goes right on back to feeding, attaching to Sana’s nipple with a cut-off gurgle.

“You do,” Din repeats, more forcefully, rubbing his wife’s back. “Cyare, you’ve given up so much for her. She’ll come to understand that. One day. When she’s old enough.”

“Don’t think I even deserve you either,” she cheekily says, prodding her elbow into his thigh.

Din kisses her cheek, along her hairline, the shell of her ear. “When we’re done here, I’m going to take you back into that bed,” he whispers seductively, “and… _hold_ you until you fall asleep.”

Sana sighs, biting her lip and groaning at the enticing offer. “I can’t wait.”

“I love you,” he whispers into her hair. “We’ll get through it.”

When Anya gets her full, Din is the one to place her in her crib, setting the precious sleepy, milk-drunk baby girl on her back. He runs a finger soothingly down her nose, back and forth, up and down, from tip to crown – the same trick he uses on his Foundling – until with a soft sigh, Anya finally, blessedly, goes to sleep.

Sana is already in the bed, dimming the small lamp by the bedside and snuggling the small green Child’s body, setting her chin upon the top of his head. Mercifully, he doesn’t wake, but his hand finds Sana’s thumb to hold. Din spoons behind Sana, inhaling deeply the floral fragrance of her hair.

“Look at us, couple o’ old fools,” Sana mumbles. She’s already close to being half-asleep herself. “Coupla kids later and you’d forget we were actually warriors…and that you were a ruthless…bounty hunter.”

Din holds his wife’s body closer as she drifts off, her voice going soft and sleepy. He feels so far removed from that time – from Nevarro, from those timeless, lonely nights on the Crest. They feel like another lifetime altogether.

The Child snores peacefully, and Din covers his hand over his belly. All because this little one came into his life. And to think, he thought he would never have a family again. It felt like an act of defiance, a rebellion: the simple act of welcoming the Child into his life, uprooting everything that he had clung to so dearly. The things he held so tightly around himself, like a protection, like armor from the outside world. And releasing it, came as easily as slipping free the helmet over his head with a sigh of relief. He hadn’t realized how broken and lonely he was until something started filling it in.

There’s a lightness in his chest, where previously he felt hollow.

He makes a quick prayer to every deity he can think of, in thanks for returning him to Sana, for the safe reunion of their baby, back in her mother’s arms. For the coming together of coverts. For the shared joy and growing community, despite the historically ragged rifts between the Mandalorian and Ming Po. Even the work of his Armorer, the carrying on of their traditions, and even, he thinks dully, he’s a little grateful for Paz Vizla.

Distantly, he thinks of the battles still to be won. With Moff Gideon. The Jedi – as rare as Mandalorians these days. The quest for the Child’s people. The search for the Artifact – to one day be reunited rightfully to the Mandalorians. The nominal voices of dissent. His own putrid fears, which often, though lately less and less, occupy his roving mind when he lets it.

Those will come. In time.

Din Djarin is only a man. He has a family – a wife, a Foundling, a daughter.

His heart stutters, and a smile comes to his lips. He hugs Sana’s warm body to his front. She speaks nonsense, lowly, deep in slumber. Idly pats his arm snaked around her waist.

Right now, he wants sleep. And, after all, it will be a new day tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof they're ~married~ now eeeeeeeeeee!!!!! welcome aboard the softdaddy din slut train choo choo


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